We are six years into the era of 5G and, based on previous timing, should be closer to the end of the era than the beginning. At this point in previous G iterations, MWC was awash with “G” banners – 3G, 4G and, yes, especially 5G - but at MWC last week 6G had a decidedly more muted presence. Instead, much of the talk was about carrier progress with 5G. John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, described the status of 5G as being “over the hump”, a statement that reflected the complications of 5G’s implementation as well as eliciting some jealousy from other regions of the world that say they are most definitely still “mid-hump”.
This sobering 5G reality check should be no surprise to anyone truly in tune with the market. The initial promises for the upgrade were wildly optimistic to say the least, if not downright fantasy, with ridiculous promises of speed that were both irrelevant for most applications as well as being based on the sketchiest spectrum that could not even penetrate windows, never mind more solid obstacles (see The Emperor Only Wears Underpants).
But anyone not looking at the realities of the technology may be forgiven for confusion at Mr. Stankey’s comments: the carriers, device manufacturers and (especially) industry organizations have been celebrating 5G’s rapid growth based on the false premise that 5G smartphone adoption equated to 5G success. That was always false logic: consumers simply bought a new phone because they wanted one: the fact that it was 5G was irrelevant to most of them. And these surface-level consumer adoption stats hid the significant struggles facing the carriers due a significant hardware upgrade and that is always painful.
6G is looking refreshingly better: firstly, no one is (as of yet) making ridiculous claims about what 6G will enable (remember remote brain surgery as one 5G claim?). But more importantly it looks set to be mainly a software upgrade which means far fewer expensive, and time-sucking, truck rolls to get it done.
But what of the claims for 6G? After all, there has to be a reason for the upgrade rather than simply because it exists. The main reason ties neatly into the main booth theme at most of MWC: AI (of course). The desire with 6G is to redesign the network architecture to be better suited for agentic AI and if there is a “big claim” behind this design, it’s the carrier hope that they can take greater ownership of the AI space.
But there is also an underlying reason for the 6G + AI initiative. Europe, for one, is betting on 6G not just as a technological upgrade but as a strategic asset that will help Europe reduce its reliance on US and Chinese technology.Bruno Zerbib, CTIO of Orange emphasized this saying that privacy, data sovereignty and secure AI controls are non-negotiable. “We need [AI] models trained on European data, under European rules.”
Renate Nikolay, Deputy Director General of the EU’s DG Connect, went further, warning that Europe’s dependence on non-European providers for cloud services, AI infrastructure and semiconductor creates a strategic vulnerability.
All of this combines to make 6G probably the most important upgrade in the past 20 years, combining a clear technological need (AI) with strategic sovereignty issues driven by a desire for less reliance on US data sources. It may have been barely more than a whisper at the show, but almost everyone was whispering it.