Valère (@valere.hostux.social.ap.brid.gy)

It’s Time To Rethink 6G <img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-person-sitting-at-a-table-with-number-of-icons-sitting-on-it.png?id=56130041&width=1200&height=800&coordinates=0%2C13%2C0%2C13" /> Is the worldwide race to keep expanding mobile bandwidth a fool’s errand? Could maximum data speeds—on mobile devices, at home, at work—be approaching “fast enough” for most people for most purposes? These heretical questions are worth asking, because industry bandwidth tracking data has lately been revealing something surprising: Terrestrial and mobile-data growth is slowing down. In fact, absent a dramatic change in consumer tech and broadband usage patterns, data-rate demand appears set to top out below 1 billion bits per second (1 gigabit per second) in just a few years. This is a big deal. A presumption of endless growth in wireless and terrestrial broadband data rates has for decades been a key driver behind telecom research funding. To keep telecom’s R&D engine rooms revving, research teams around the world have innovated a seemingly endless succession of technologies to expand bandwidth rates, such as 2G’s <a href="https://telephoneworld.org/cellular-phone-history/the-first-digital-cellular-systems-tdma-gsm-and-iden-2g/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">move to digital cell networks</a>, 3G’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">enhanced data-transfer capabilities</a>, and 5G’s <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/2019-the-year-of-5g" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">low-latency wireless connectivity</a>. Yet present-day consumer usage appears set to throw a spanner in the works. Typical real-world 5G data rates <a href="https://about.att.com/sites/broadband/performance" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">today achieve</a> up to 500 megabits per second for download speeds (and less for uploads). And some initial studies suggest 6G networks could<a href="https://www.livescience.com/technology/communications/6g-speeds-hit-100-gbps-in-new-test-500-times-faster-than-average-5g-cellphones" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> one day supply</a> data at 100 Gb/s. But the demand side of the equation suggests a very different situation. Mainstream consumer applications requiring more than 1 Gb/s border on the nonexistent. This is in part because mobile applications that need more than 15 to 20 Mb/s are rare, while mainstream consumer applications requiring more than 1 Gb/s border on the nonexistent. At most, meeting the demand for multiple simultaneous active applications and users requires hundreds of Mb/s range. To date, no new consumer technologies have emerged to expand the bandwidth margins much beyond the 1 Gb/s plateau. Yet wireless companies and researchers today still set their sights on a marketplace where consumer demand will gobble up as much bandwidth as can be provided by their mobile networks. The thinking here seems to be that if more bandwidth is available, new use cases and applications will spontaneously emerge to consume it. Is that such a foregone conclusion, though? Many technologies have had phases where customers eagerly embrace every improvement in some parameter—until a saturation point is reached and improvements are ultimately met with a collective shrug. Consider a very brief history of airspeed in commercial air travel. Passenger aircraft today fly at around 900 kilometers per hour—and have continued to traverse the skies at the same airspeed range for the past five decades. Although supersonic passenger aircraft found a niche from the 1970s through the early 2000s with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the Concorde</a>, commercial supersonic transport is no longer available for the mainstream consumer marketplace today. To be clear, there may still be niche use cases for many gigabits per second of wireless bandwidth—just as there may still be executives or world leaders who continue to look forward to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-new-supersonic-boom" target="_self">spanning the globe at supersonic speeds</a>. But what if the vast majority of 6G’s consumer bandwidth demand ultimately winds up resembling today’s 5G profile? It’s a possibility worth imagining. <h2>Consider a Bandwidth-Saturated World</h2> Transmitting high-end 4K video today <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">requires</a> 15 Mb/s, according to Netflix. Home broadband upgrades from, say, hundreds of Mb/s to 1,000 Mb/s (or 1 Gb/s) typically make little to no noticeable difference <a href="https://www.highspeedinternet.com/how-much-internet-speed-do-i-need" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">for the average end user</a>. Likewise, for those with good 4G connectivity, 5G makes <a href="https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/leaving-the-vanity-metrics-behind-and-focusing-on-what-matters-customer-experience/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">much less of an improvement </a>on the mobile experience than advertisers like to claim—despite 5G networks being, <a href="https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/what-is-5g/what-are-5g-speeds.html#~q-a" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to Cisco</a>, 1.4 to 14 times as fast as 4G. So, broadly, for a typical mobile device today, going much above 15 Mb/s borders on pointless. For a home, assuming two or three inhabitants all separately browsing or watching, somewhere between 100 Mb/s and 1 Gb/s marks the approximate saturation point beyond which further improvements become less and less noticeable, for most use cases. Probing a more extreme use case, one of the largest bandwidth requirements in recent consumer tech is <a href="https://www.flightsimulator.com/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024</a>, whose “<a href="https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024-may-take-an-enormous-amount-of-internet-bandwidth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">jaw-dropping bandwidth demand</a>,” in the words of Windows Central, amounts to a maximum of 180 Mb/s. Stop to think about that for one moment. Here is a leading-edge tech product requiring less than one-fifth of 1 Gb/s, and such a voracious bandwidth appetite today is considered “jaw-dropping.” But what about the need to “future proof” the world’s networks? Perhaps most mobile and terrestrial networks don’t need many-Gb/s connectivity now, say the bigger-is-always-better proponents. But the world will soon! For starters, then, what bandwidth-hogging technologies are today on the horizon? In September, Apple unveiled its iPhone 16, which CEO Tim Cook <a href="https://www.fierce-network.com/modernization/killer-app-5g-will-arrive-next-week" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said </a>would feature generative AI broadly “across [Apple] products.” Could Apple’s new AI capabilities perhaps be a looming, bandwidth-consuming dark horse? One high-bandwidth use case would involve the latest iPhone using the camera to recognize a scene and comment on what’s in it. However, that’s not dissimilar to Google Lens’s <a href="https://lens.google/howlensworks/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">visual search feature</a>, which hasn’t markedly changed network traffic. Indeed, this sort of feature, perhaps used a few times per day, could require bandwidth equivalent to a second or two of high-definition video. None of this would come close to saturating the general bandwidth capacities noted above. To play devil’s advocate a little more, consider a representative batch of five soon-to-be-scaled-up, potentially high-bandwidth consumer technologies that do already exist. Do any of them appear poised to generate the many-Gb/s demand that present-day net usage does not? What about autonomous cars, for instance? Surely they’ll need as much bandwidth as they can possibly be given. Yet, the precious few autonomous cars out in the world today are generally designed to work <a href="https://stlpartners.com/articles/private-cellular/are-automated-vehicles-really-a-killer-use-case-for-5g/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">without much </a>in the way of instantaneous Internet communication. And no autonomous tech around the bend appears set to change the equation substantially, concerning instantaneous bandwidth needs. The future of autonomy may be revolutionary and ultimately inevitable, but it doesn’t appear to require network connectivity much beyond a decent 5G connection. No new technology has emerged that demands network requirements much beyond what 4G and 5G already deliver. Much the same argument holds for the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/internet-of-things" target="_self">Internet of things</a> (IoT), which is not expected to increase network traffic <a href="https://www.eseye.com/resources/blogs/high-data-low-latency-iot-connectivity/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">above what a decent 4G connection could yield</a>. Holographic communications likewise offer no greater bandwidth sink than any of the above case studies do. For a typical user, holograms are in fact just stereographic video projections. So if a <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">single 4K stream demands 15 Mb/s</a>, then stereo 4K streams would require 30 Mb/s. Of course, sophisticated representations of entire 3D scenes for large groups of users interacting with one another in-world could conceivably push bandwidth requirements up. But at this point, we’re getting into Matrix-like imagined technologies without any solid evidence to suggest a good 4G or 5G connection wouldn’t meet the tech’s bandwidth demands. AI in general is the wild card in the deck. The mysterious future directions for this technology suggest that AI broadband and wireless bandwidth needs could conceivably exceed 1 Gb/s. But consider at least the known knowns in the equation: At the moment, present-day AI applications involve small amounts of prompt text or a few images or video clips sent to and from an edge device like a smartphone or a consumer tablet. Even if one allows for the prompt text and photo and video bandwidth requirements to dramatically expand from there, it seems unlikely to match or exceed the already strenuous requirements of a simple 4K video stream. Which, as noted above, would appear to suggest modest bandwidth demands in the range of 15 Mb/s. The metaverse, meanwhile, has flopped. But even if it picks up steam again tomorrow, current estimates of its bandwidth needs run from <a href="https://www.iceconnect.com/blog/tech-tips/metaverse-network-requirements/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s</a>—all within 5G’s range. Admittedly, the most aggressive longer-term forecasts for the metaverse suggest that cutting-edge applications could demand as much as <a href="https://www.lightreading.com/wifi/when-will-wi-fi-really-support-the-metaverse-" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">5 Gb/s</a> bandwidth. And while it’s true that in January, Verizon delivered more than 5 Gb/s bandwidth in an <a href="https://voip.review/2025/01/09/verizons-5g-lab-trial-achieves-groundbreaking-5-5-gbps-speed/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">experimental 5G network</a>, that result is unlikely to be replicable for most consumers in most settings anytime soon. Yet, even allowing for the practical unreachability of 5 Gb/s speeds on a real-world 5G network, a reader should still weigh the fact that any such imagined applications that might ultimately consume 5 Gb/s of bandwidth represent an extreme. And only the upper end of that subset is what might one day exceed data speeds that present-day 5G tech delivers. I would argue, in other words, that no new technology has emerged that demands network requirements much beyond what 4G and 5G already deliver. So at this point future-proofing telecom in the anticipation of tens or more Gb/s of consumer bandwidth demand seems like expensive insurance being taken out against an improbable event. <h2>Consumers Have Already Discovered the Gigabit Plateau</h2> As can be seen in the charts below—excerpted from my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Telecoms-History-Prof-William-Webb/dp/B0D83Z5FYJ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The End of Telecoms History</a>, and compiled from a mix of sources, including Cisco and Barclays Research—a downward trend in data growth has been evident for at least the past decade. The statistics being tracked in the charts “Growth of Mobile-Data Usage” and “Growth of Landline-Data Usage” may seem a little counterintuitive at first. But it’s important to clarify that these charts do not suggest that overall bandwidth usage is declining. Rather, the conclusion these charts lead to is that the rate of bandwidth growth is slowing.<h3>Approaching Zero Growth</h3> As mobile-data growth slows, the telecom industry faces a new reality. Current 5G networks [black and orange lines] and terrestrial broadband networks [orange line] meet most consumer needs. Providers of both have seen a decrease in the growth of their data usage over recent years.<div class="flourish-embed flourish-chart"> <noscript> <img alt="chart visualization" src="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/21101650/thumbnail" width="100%" /> </noscript> </div><h3></h3> <div class="flourish-embed flourish-chart"> <noscript> <img alt="chart visualization" src="https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/21146251/thumbnail" width="100%" /> </noscript> </div> Let’s start with mobile data. Between 2015 and 2023, there’s a consistent decline in bandwidth growth of some 6 percent per year. The overall trend is a little harder to interpret in landline bandwidth data, because there’s a large COVID-related peak in 2020 and 2021. But even after accounting for this entirely understandable anomaly, the trend is that home and office broadband growth fell on average by around 3 percent per year between 2015 and 2023.Extrapolating the trends from both of these curves leads to the ultimate conclusion that data growth should ultimately fall to zero or at least a negligibly small number by around 2027. This is an unpopular conclusion. It runs contrary to the persistent drumbeat of a many-Gb/s future that telecom “experts” have been claiming for years. For example, in November 2023 the Biden White House published its <a href="https://www.ntia.gov/sites/default/files/publications/national_spectrum_strategy_final.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spectrum strategy</a>, which states, “According to one estimate, data traffic on macro cellular networks is expected to increase by over 250 percent in the next 5 years, and over 500 percent in the next 10 years.” Additionally, the Stockholm-based telecom company Ericsson recently <a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/reports" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">predicted</a> near-term “surge[s] in mobile data traffic.” And the United Kingdom’s telecommunications regulator, Ofcom <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0036/248769/conclusions-mobile-spectrum-demand-and-markets.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">forecast</a> a bandwidth growth-rate of 40 percent for the foreseeable future. But, as shown in the charts here, many mobile and Internet users in the developed world seem to be accessing all the bandwidth they need. Data rates are no longer the constraining and determinative factor that they used to be. The need to continue developing faster and bigger networks may therefore be overplayed today. That chapter of the Internet’s history is arguably now over, or it soon will be. <h2>The Telecom Industry Will Be Shifting Gears, Too</h2> The implications of having enough coverage and bandwidth are most obvious in the equipment-supply industry. Major network suppliers may need to become accustomed to the new reality of data rates leveling out. Are <a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2024/3/ericsson-announces-headcount-reduction" target="_blank">Ericsson’s</a> and <a href="https://techblog.comsoc.org/2024/04/18/nokia-like-ericsson-announces-fresh-wave-of-job-cuts/" target="_blank">Nokia’s</a><a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2024/3/ericsson-announces-headcount-reduction" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a>recent layoffs and the bankruptcies of smaller suppliers (such as <a href="https://www.lightreading.com/finance/airspan-to-return-to-private-life-through-bankruptcy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Airspan Networks</a>) a harbinger of what’s coming for telecom markets? Operators are already <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/telecommunications-industry-outlook.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">investing less</a> in 5G equipment and are likely already close to “maintenance only” spending. Most mobile and fixed operators have <a href="https://tefficient.com/analysis/public-industry-analysis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">not seen revenue growth above inflation </a>for many years but hold out hope that somehow this will turn around. Perhaps, though, if the numbers referenced here are to be believed, that turnaround isn’t coming. <img alt="An illustration of a man holding a bottle full of items and pouring it out. " class="rm-shortcode" id="3694e" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-a-man-holding-a-bottle-full-of-items-and-pouring-it-out.png?id=56272704&width=980" /> Davide Comai Telecommunications has historically been a high-growth industry, but current trends suggest it’s heading toward something more static—more like a public utility, where in this case the public good is delivering data connectivity reliably. Extrapolating these trends, equipment suppliers won’t need to invest as much on bandwidth expansion but instead will focus on improving the margins on existing lines of products. Some degree of bandwidth expansion for 6G networks will still be necessary. The metaverse example above suggests a range of “ceiling heights” in the maximum Gb/s that users will demand in the years ahead. For most, 1 Gb/s still appears to be more than enough. For those who use high-end applications like future immersive virtual worlds, perhaps that ceiling is closer to 5 Gb/s. But concentrating research efforts on 6G deployments that can deliver 10 Gb/s and higher for everyone appears not to be grounded in any currently imaginable consumer technologies. To adjust to a potential new reality of operating their wireless networks at closer to utility-like or commodity-like terms, many telecom companies may face a future of restructuring and cost cutting. A useful analogy here are budget airlines, which thrive because most consumers select their airfare on the basis of cost. Similarly, the way for future telecom companies to win a larger share of the customer base may be increasingly dictated not by technological innovation but by price and customer service. To be clear, the need for new telecom research will continue. But with bandwidth expansion deprioritized, other innovations will certainly include cheaper and more efficient or more reliable ways to deliver existing services. If consumer demand for ever more mobile data continues to dry up, regulators would no longer need to <a href="https://lightyear.ai/blogs/fcc-spectrum-auctions-explained" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">find new spectrum bands for cellular every few years</a> and then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_auction" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">conduct auctions</a>. Indeed, the demand for spectrum may abate across most areas. Regulators may also have to consider whether fewer operators may be better for a country, with perhaps only a single underlying fixed and mobile network in many places—just as utilities for electricity, water, gas, and the like are often structured around single (or a limited set of) operators. Finally, politicians will need to rethink their desire to be at the forefront of metrics such as homes connected by fiber, 5G deployment, or national leadership in 6G. That’s a bit like wanting to be top of the league for the number of Ferraris per capita. Instead, the number of homes with sufficient connectivity and percentage of the country covered by 10 Mb/s mobile may be better metrics to pursue as policy goals. Another area of research will surely involve widening coverage in underserved areas and regions of the world—while still keeping costs low with more environmentally friendly solutions. Outside of urban areas, broadband is sometimes slow, with mobile connectivity nonexistent. Even urban areas contain so-called <a href="https://totaltele.com/government-landlords-or-operators-who-is-responsible-for-tackling-the-uks-urban-not-spots/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">not-spots</a>, while <a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2021/11/delivering-consistent-high-performance-indoor-5g-experience" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">indoor coverage</a> can be particularly problematic, especially when the building is clad with materials that are near-impenetrable to radio waves. Broadly, there are two main ways for telecoms to shore up the current digital divide. The first is regulatory. Government funding, whether through new regulation and existing grants already on the books, can go to telecom providers in many regions that have been identified for broadband expansion. Indirect sources of funding should not be overlooked either—for instance, to allow operators to retain radio-spectrum license fees and without paying auction fees. The second component is technological. Lower-cost rural telecom deployments could include <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/satellite-cellphone-starlink" target="_self">satellite Internet deployments</a>. Better indoor coverage can happen via <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/private-5g-vodafone" target="_self">private 5G networks</a> or through improved access to existing and enhanced Wi-Fi. The above scenarios represent a major change of direction—from an industry built around innovating a new mobile generation every decade toward an industry focused on delivering lower prices and increased reliability. The coming 6G age might not be what telecom forecasters imagine. Its dawn may not herald a bold summit push toward 10 Gb/s and beyond. Instead, the 6G age could usher in something closer to an adjustment period, with the greatest opportunities for those who best understand how to benefit from the end of the era of rapid bandwidth growth in telecom history. https://spectrum.ieee.org/5g-bandwidth