Significant government investments have already occurred, and they're expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. Nations are jockeying for a leadership position in 6G for both commercial and military use cases and seeding early explorations into technology and applications.1

The significant expansions anticipated in all of the usual metrics of cellular communication, including capacity, latency, device density, connection reliability, and other technology growth markers, is well documented.2 Also noteworthy is the burgeoning growth in the number and diversity of devices coming online via the rapidly expanding IoT.

Of course, to name a few areas of substantial growth, these will require significant technology breakthroughs in chipset design, antenna technology, ML-embedded networking, and real-time machine learning.

However, from a broad-based business and consumer perspective, the major impact of 6G is expected to be in the design, deployment, and widespread adoption of a bevy of novel applications that exploit these substantial technological breakthroughs (see figure). Some of the applications being discussed include holographic telepresence, remote surgery, deployment of an autonomous fleet of unmanned vehicles, and deep space or deep ocean exploration.3

The 6G technology breakthrough will need to meet a consistent, predictable, and demanding set of service level agreements (SLAs) to support such diverse applications while adapting to an unprecedented level of system dynamics in a consistent manner.