We barely even have 5G yet and already there is talk of something even better coming along: 6G! A truly game-changing technology that could offer blazingly fast connection speeds. Instead of an incremental improvement over 4G connectivity, which is really what 5G is, 6G would be an exponential improvement. And while it may not be ready until 2030, the early indications are that it would be worth the wait.
MIT Technology Review explains all of the differences between 5G and 6G in greater detail:
“First some background. By any criteria, 5G is a significant advance on the previous 4G standards. The first 5G networks already offer download speeds of up to 600 megabits per second and have the potential to get significantly faster. By contrast, 4G generally operates at up to 28 Mbits/s—and most mobile-phone users will have experienced that rate grinding to zero from time to time, for reasons that aren’t always clear.
5G is obviously better in this respect and could even replace many landline connections.
But the most significant benefits go beyond these headline figures. 5G base stations, for example, are designed to handle up to a million connections, versus the 4,000 that 4G base stations can cope with. That should make a difference to communication at major gatherings such as sporting events, demonstrations, and so on, and it could enable all kinds of applications for the internet of things.
Then there is latency—the time it takes for signals to travel across the network. 5G is designed to have a latency of just a single millisecond, compared with 50 milliseconds or more on 4G. Any gamer will tell you how important that is, because it makes the remote control of gaming characters more responsive. But various telecoms operators have demonstrated how the same advantage makes it possible to control drones more accurately, and even to perform telesurgery using a mobile connection.
All this should be possible with lower power requirements to boot, and current claims suggest that 5G devices should have 10 times the battery lives of 4G devices.
So how can 6G better that? 6G will, of course, offer even faster download speeds—the current thinking is that they could approach 1 terabit per second.”
In an increasingly mobile world with an insatiable thirst for instantaneous data and real-time connections the importance of 6G can not be understated. It may not be ready until 2030 but when it is ready it’ll likely be the driving force behind most of the technological advancements that will be pushing society forward a decade from now. Powering everything from mobile devices and driverless cars to the Internet of Things and Virtual Reality.
Is 6G the Greatest Idea Ever?
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