This year’s MWC was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Not for the usual stuff, of course, but the presence (or lack) of 6G. And I wasn’t the only one to notice and comment on this. There were other journalists and analysts who came away with the same observation.
I expected MWC would be some sort of delineator for 6G; at least that is how it seemed to go from the weeks of promo material that came across my screen prior to this event. Therefore, I was slightly taken aback by the lack of 6G activity (except for Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and Qualcomm).
For those of us who understand wireless technology, it is easy to compartmentalise the various emissions about 6G and cull the chaff from the wheat. Because I am 35-year veteran engineer in wireless, I can tell who is talking smack and who is seriously trying to disseminate real and valuable 6G information.
Elsewhere I have expressed hope that, this time, the industry has learned its lesson and will not repeat the 5G hype scenario with 6G. That trajectory was a recipe for failure. So perhaps the lack of 6G hype at MWC is a hint that the industry won’t follow the same trajectory as 5G. We’ll see…
A little rehash about 5G
But before we make a foray into 6G, one thing to bear in mind is that 5G is barely out of the gate. At the end of 2025, only one out of six networks was standalone 5G. This is based on Ookla’s February 2026 reality check report. That means 80 percent of the infrastructure is still performing along 4G specs. And even among those that are fully 5G, most are way below the promised 5G speeds.
The unveiling of 5G failed miserably, pretty much in every sense of the word. Eventually, the industry figured out that it just would not sell as a “wow” technology, swallowed hard, moved on, and is still eating the costs. Even today, there still is no killer app or killer vertical that makes 5G saleable by itself.
Of course, there are some 5G successes, but they are few and far between. For example, private 5G seems to be one of those verticals that hold promise, but it is just getting traction. The story is similar for most other 5G offerings.
5G is going to muddle along, slowly but surely getting deployed and implemented long before 6G is even on the radar. It will simply replace the performance of 4G without a lot of fanfare while offering improvements in technology (such as network slicing, dynamic network management, virtual everything, and other optimisation schemes). If one looks at it top-down, it is simply a more efficient 4G with some new features.
G Whiz
Over the last couple of years, I have moved away from viewing 6G as a new platform. There is little doubt what the technology will provide will improve every segment that it touches. However, it is not a revolutionary step up. It is simply the agglomeration of more mature existing wireless technologies, the emergence of some new ones, and the integration of AI and its subordinate elements.
It has outrun the bounds of the G designation because it will become a sub-platform of AI. It will not resemble what we have been defining as a wireless generation up to this version. We will talk about that further on.
But without verticals and killer apps, the same scenario will play out in 6G despite bringing the next generation of features such as integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), digital twins and metaverse integration, holographic telepresence and eventually human augmentation.
So let’s stop the noise about “6G” and find something that can describe it for what it really will be.
But what about AI, ML, and Machine Intelligence?
The 6G/AI continuum is still quite undefined (note, going forward I will use the term “AI”, but it will apply to machine intelligence and machine learning as well). While those knowledgeable in the industry generally agree on its definition, there is a lot of debate about what the final wireless product will look like.
Many argue that 6G will have AI as its foundational pillar, and that 6G will only be one element of AI, removing its identity as a stand-alone component.
AI cognition is the wild card in all of this. 5G was pre-AI, so any of the individual containers integrated with 5G are retro, except for emerging and maturing technologies that can be redirected or integrated with AI. However, with 6G increasingly the aspiration is that everything will be AI-native, so trying to keep the two separate is not the best path forward. With 6G as an element of AI rather than vice versa, it removes a lot of encumbrances and becomes a single track.
The thing is – these advanced apps and the technologies that support them are what the next wireless ecosystem will be. It will not be a wireless infrastructure as we see 5G because it will be AI-native, making the leap from connected things to connected intelligence. This is the “wow” that will dazzle the planet.
This wireless AI-native ecosystem evolution will be a continuum of communications and self-managing machine operations. The foundational technological advancements of 6G – its key features, benefits, and key enabling technologies – are the elements that will take it out of being simply a communications platform to being a global interactive, multi-segment enabler.
Think everything from autonomous vehicles, self-organising networks, the IoX, military, government, businesses, smart everything, space, satellites, and more (whew! This is getting tiring).
It will have its tentacles in the management of just about every industry, segment, function, and device that exists, using cutting-edge innovations like ultra-massive MIMO, quantum computing, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) and platforms and technologies yet to be discovered. This will empower new functions such as mixed reality, holographic and multi-sensory communication, interactive 3D, virtual digital humans, collaborative robots, automated infrastructures, a new digital world based on twins, and more – and all in real time.
Through the integration of AI, this new global network will provide unparalleled capabilities, ranging from improved mobile broadband to innovative applications in domains such as smart cities and autonomous systems and devices. This integration signifies a new epoch of intelligent, self-optimising networks that will eventually change the standards of connectivity and digital engagement as we know it today
…But don’t hold your breath. This is decades out.
So, after all this rambling, what’s next?
There is so much more to talk about and drill down on. In labs and universities around the world, technologies that will enable the next generation of wireless are emerging, and great minds are working on them.
However, I don’t see this next generation of wireless having any type of “it’s here!” moment which sends us down a new path. Rather, I believe it will appear slowly as an adjunct to the development of AI. In fact, soon the two will be inextricably intertwined and will mature as a single platform.
Once this next generation of wireless gets traction, AI will do the heavy lifting. It will be the great enabler for whatever astonishing app, vertical, and performance the network will deliver.
The network will only be the vehicle, the layer upon which AI does its magic. In fact, it would not surprise me if eventually the network will become insignificant, and all conversation will be from the AI perspective.
And wireless? That’s only the transport layer within AI, upon which we are designing things like level 5 autonomous vehicle systems with built-in real-time, 3D holographic environments.
