At the intersection of technical innovation and underlying infrastructure lies the potential for ignition. But for any innovative sparks to catch fire, there needs to be a winning use case or paradigm shift application built atop the infrastructure that can spur adoption at scale.
This, as the White House, along with the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement expressing their shared intent to advance the research and development and standardization of 6G networks.
That solves, at least in theory, the infrastructure question surrounding 6G — the designation for a future technical standard of a sixth-generation technology for wireless communications.
What remains to be solved for are the business and commerce use cases that will help 6G scale across nations and spur broad adoption.
Complicating matters somewhat is that 5G, the current gold standard in connectivity, succeeded in doing what it needed to do from an infrastructure rollout standpoint, but was launched at time when end-users were stuck in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic able to get all the connectivity and speed they needed via basic Wi-Fi — a context which in many ways precluded the development of a killer use case.
Thus, 6G will need to come up with its own endemic use cases for businesses that are able to ignite 6G broadband adoption and support better, more efficient commerce.
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The 6G technology is considered key at a supranational level as it relates to economic competitiveness, national security and the functioning of society. It is a national priority in many countries, as evidenced by the recent joint statement from the White House, and the largest number of 6G patents have been filed in China and the United States, both of which exceed the amounts filed by any other country.
While currently still under development, many 6G networks are expected to be deployed and operational by the late 2020’s, with some countries — including South Korea — setting 2028 as a target.
Given the multiyear runway, the use cases for businesses that could spur 6G broadband adoption will likely be ones that leverage the technology’s speed, low latency and connectivity to deliver transformative solutions and experiences across multiple industries — as well as those applications that help democratize access to present-day innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), autonomous vehicles and connected automobiles, and other advances whose current adoption remains bottlenecked by the unit economics of their deployment.
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As just one example, 6G’s expanded capacity and connectivity could support the proliferation of internet of things (IoT) devices on a massive scale. Businesses might leverage IoT for real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and optimization of processes across various industries, including manufacturing, agriculture and logistics.
“The Industrial 4.0 revolution was based on digitization, and it’s starting to mature now,” Prateek Kathpal, president and CEO of SymphonyAI Industrial, told PYMNTS in an interview posted Dec. 1. The adoption of 6G is likely to give the impact of connectivity across traditionally traditional sectors a needed shot in the arm.
Additionally, 6G’s low latency and high bandwidth could revolutionize healthcare delivery, enabling remote surgeries, real-time telemedicine consultations, and advanced medical imaging techniques. Businesses in the healthcare sector could leverage these capabilities to improve patient care, increase efficiency, and expand access to medical services.
In the banking space, 6G’s high-speed connectivity can make mobile banking more seamless and efficient, enabling quicker transactions and tailored, real-time financial advice through chatbots. Financial institutions can also offer personalized services and customize offers based on customers’ needs.
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“Businesses are realizing that there is a cost to some of the legacy things that they’re doing, and that it can be an impediment to making their business efficient,” Robin Gregg, CEO at RoadSync, told PYMNTS. “I think businesses now understand that no matter how traditional they are, how they’ve been operating, that now is the time to update how they work.”
The ability of 6G to enable real-time data transfer at unprecedented speeds will provide firms with granular, right-now insights that they can then leverage as a key value-add and competitive differentiator.
It will be particularly useful across the applications that firms are just now starting to explore within innovations like AI, making things like AI agents and autonomous chatbots cheaper, faster, and more useful.
And 6G will likely roll out in step with many other background innovations percolating across the business landscape, aiding things like warehouse robotics and the ongoing digitization of, well, everything.
Crucially, 6G is being looked at by experts to help with broader availability of around the corner technological phase shifts like quantum computing.
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