While the world plans for 6G, SA’S 5G still far behind
AS PART of US President Joe Biden’s June visit to the UK, the US and the UK announced an updated Atlantic Charter, agreeing to collaborate on research and development of 6G, or sixth-generation wireless technology.
6G, the successor to 5G cellular technology, uses higher frequencies than 5G networks, and therefore provides substantially higher capacity and much lower latency of one microsecond (a thousand times faster than 5G). It is expected that 6G will support data rates of 9.6 gigabits per second or 1 terabyte per second, allowing the download of 142 hours of Netflix movies in one second. In addition, 6G’s higher frequencies (95 GHZ to 3 THZ) will enable much faster sampling rates, and thus enhance sound quality.
According to Hexa-x, the joint European 6G initiative, the prospective uses of 6G can broadly be divided into five different categories:
◆ Sustainable development. The expected capabilities of 6G will provide unparalleled opportunities to enable sustainable development in many spheres of society and industry by leveraging the possibility to collect data and respond to it in real-time. Examples are globally distributed sensors to monitor the environment, greater access to e-health and telemedicine, and automated supply chains using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help reduce waste in production and the logistics chain.
◆ Local trust zones. 6G could provide the throughput, reliability and security required in situations where sub-networks are needed, such as precision healthcare where in-body devices connect to a local hub, ubiquitous sensor networks, Internet of Things micro-networks for smart cities, infrastructure-less network extensions, and low-power micro-networks in production and manufacturing.
◆ Robots to cobots. Because of the growth of AI and ML and the propagation of autonomous systems, robots will become an inherent part of society and industry. Gradually, they will take responsibility for more complex tasks that require tight interaction via 6G with co-operative mobile robots (cobots), remote robots or the cloud to avoid harmful incidents.
◆ Massive twinning. 5G introduced the digital twin concept of industrial processes. The creation of a digital twin from humans, physical objects and processes entails capturing and modelling the physical world to allow unprecedented experiences and insight into the system. Digital twins were used in the testing of possible side-effects of Covid-19 vaccines.
◆ Tele-presence. Augmented reality could make fully immersive sports possible, as well as allow first responders to connect emergency patients to medical experts many kilometres away. Because of the ultra-low latency, specialists can respond in real-time.
Last year, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that they had built a device that operates at high frequencies in the tera-hertz (THZ) range. In the same year, researchers from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and Osaka University in Japan announced that they had created a chip to handle tera-hertz waves. In 2021, scientists at Millimeter Wave Products in the US developed amplifiers for the G bands operating in the tera-hertz range.
China has successfully launched an experimental 6G test satellite into orbit equipped with a tera-hertz system.
Despite the progress and research, 6G is expected to be commercially available only around 2030. The exploitation of the frequencies in which 6G will eventually operate is still in a nascent stage.
But while the rest of the world is rolling out 5G, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa is still in a legal battle with MTN, Telkom and e.tv over their controversial tier-based 3.5 GHZ (needed for 5G) auctioning structure.
Some of the frequency bands are also used by TV broadcasters because of the failure of South Africa’s analogue-to-digital migration. Thus, 5G is partly available in a few of the larger cities. While most other countries have been able to use LTE-800 for five years or more, and many have moved to 5G, South Africa remains far behind due to a poorly managed digital migration.
Hopefully, we will get widespread 5G somewhere in the distant future. I do not know about 6G.