- Leading engineer Eddie Ball says that 6G is unlikely to come to mobile devices
- Using 6G consumes so much energy that most mobile phones cannot support it
The next generation of wireless communications might be just around the corner, but a leading engineer says most of us will never be able to use it.
Eddie Ball, an expert in radio engineering from the University of Sheffield, believes that 6G networks could be available as soon as 2030.
This new technology will enable downloads that would have taken a few seconds over 5G to be completed in mere milliseconds.
However, Mr Hall warns that 6G will be so powerful that it would likely drain a phone’s battery in just 30 minutes.
Mr Ball says: ‘A major problem is power efficiency of radio systems needed to deliver future high data rates – translating to poor future mobile battery life.’
An expert engineer says that 6G might arrive by 2030 but warns it will be so demanding that it would drain your phone’s battery in just 30 minutes (stock image)
6G, or sixth-generation wireless, is the next stage in the evolution of wireless technology.
Although 5G only began to roll out in the UK in 2019, its successor 6G could be more than 100 times faster and would be able to support microsecond latency communications.
Speaking ahead of British Science Festival in London this week, Mr Ball said: ‘If you’re on 5G, it does seem quite quick when you’re using your phone but with 6G it is almost instantaneous – no lagging at all.’
Researchers are yet to determine exactly how fast 6G will be, but some estimates suggest it could theoretically transfer 1TB of data per second.
That makes it ideal for applications like remote surgery or self-driving cars which require extremely fast reactions.
6G is the next generation of wireless mobile networks and will allow downloads to complete in just milliseconds (stock image)
As this graphic demonstrates, 5G is up to 1,000 times faster than older 4G networks. The next generation of 6G is expected to be up to 100 times faster again
Mr Ball is currently showing his research into technologies that could enable 6G at British Science Festival at the University of East London.
He believes that this next-generation technology will soon enable lightning-fast internet speeds.
However, the vast majority of people will not be able to directly benefit from this advancement.
Transferring data in such large volumes requires masses of power, an issue made worse by the fact that current 6G hardware is extremely energy inefficient.
If a modern smartphone were equipped with 6G technology, simply transferring data over the network would completely drain its battery in just 30 minutes.
Research from 2022 found that many people in Britain were not yet feeling the benefits of 5G networks. Experts think 6G will take even longer to become commonly used
‘Our research at the University of Sheffield has started to identify new techniques and architectures that can offer improved power efficiency and performance, but we’re still years away from seeing that being the reality in our everyday lives,’ said Mr Ball.
Additionally, since 6G is an entirely new technology, the current phone and national infrastructure will need to be upgraded just like the move to 5G required new towers to be installed.
Mr Ball said: ‘6G technology will only succeed if we have new advanced radio frequency systems in place to deliver it.
‘The UK’s current infrastructure, including, hardware, handsets, and the antennas, are all unfit for purpose.’
Since the required infrastructure upgrade would be so expensive it is only likely to be installed in areas which require extremely large data transfers.
These areas might include data centres and AI research facilities, highways used by self-driving cars, or so-called ‘drone superhighways’.
Just as 5G required the installation of new transmitters (pictured), 6G networks will require expensive infrastructure upgrades which will only be practical where extremely large data transfers are neded
That means, even if your phone were capable of connecting to 6G, coverage would be so patchy that it would fall back to 5G most of the time.
For this reason, it isn’t likely that mobile phones will be upgraded to a 6G network any time in the near future.
While the creation of 6G will be a significant leap forward, Mr Ball said that those developing the technology still aren’t quite sure what to do with it, describving it as a solution in search of a problem.
‘The operators are sort of scratching around to define a killer use case for 6G and I would say it’s still to be defined what that is,’ the academic added.
One possibility is that doctors might use very small short-range 6G networks to remotely operate surgical robots.
This would yield the extremely low latencies and high fidelity needed to perform the most delicate operations.
However, Mr Ball also can’t rule out that researchers will soon discover ‘all sorts of strange, weird, wonderful applications that really we can only guess what they might be’.