The race for 6G
I have been writing about my belief that the next decade or two will be dominated by a new cold war between the US and China for global economic dominance. But this cold war will likely not be fought with an arms race in nuclear weapons but rather in the technology space. The ability to build and operate vital technology infrastructure like the one needed to run 5G telecom networks will become either a strategic advantage or disadvantage in this conflict. But it seems that few people in the US are thinking about the 6G technology and how to gain a strategic advantage there.
A lot has been written about the fact that Huawei is currently the only company that has the full suite of 5G infrastructure on offer. But because this company is suspected to help the Chinese government spy on the users of its infrastructure, the US and other developed countries have banned or severely restricted the company in their markets. This means that these countries already have a disadvantage in the rollout of 5G technology because they have to rely on Western suppliers that have to first build the necessary capacity in their production facilities etc.
But while the world focuses on the rollout of 5G technology, the race for the leadership in 6G technology is already on. I am not an expert in this topic, but if we can believe Brown University’s Jianjun Ma and his colleagues then 5G technology will have insufficient bandwidth to accommodate future technologies like self-driving cars etc. This means that we will have to rely on 6G technology that is expected to be rolled out around 2030 to deliver these technologies.
But in order to get there, research and development efforts in 6G technology has to start now. China, as always, is planning ahead and has launched a 6G study group under the leadership of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2018. Research and development spending is expected to start in 2020. The European Union is looking to expand its public-private partnership program for 5G networks to the development of 6G infrastructure. And in Finland, Nokia can rely on massive government and academic support to defend its leading role in wireless technology. At the moment, it seems as if Nokia and potentially Ericsson will be the only Western companies that will be able to keep up with the Chinese competition from Huawei and ZTE.
In March 2019, the University of Oulu in Finland hosted the first ever 6G Wireless Summit. Gold sponsors of the summit were Nokia and Huawei. Academic speakers at the conference came from Finland, Sweden, China, Australia, the UK and Germany. Industry representatives came from companies like Huawei, ZTE, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, ABB, Bosch, NTT DoCoMo and China Telecom. And you know who was absent? The Americans. With the exception of an academic speaker from Columbia University, there was hardly any participation from the US. Also, the US has not done any feasibility studies or developed any policy to support research and development efforts in this field.
Conservative policy wonks in the US are increasingly embracing industrial policy as a measure to promote US interests in the economic and geopolitical arena. It would be good if they would choose to start with 6G because the world’s biggest economy is already falling behind when it comes to the technology of the 2030s.