Industry, Not DOD, Should Be Entrusted With Building 5G, Pai Says

5G should be built by industry, not government, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at the 6G Symposium Tuesday. The agency may need to consider a 2G sunset, he said. The world is in early stages of 5G, but it will mean rising competition for carriers, Pai said. Others looked beyond fifth-generation to a decade or longer away, with even faster speeds and lower latency.

“The market is far better positioned to deliver value to the wireless consumer than a more centrally planned approach,” Pai said. His comments echoed industry responses this week to a DOD request for information (see 2010190057). The U.S. led on 4G because “the FCC didn’t pick winners and losers, didn’t drive the market structure,” he said. There might be “academic appeal” to a government-driven approach, “but I don’t think that’s the right one,” he said.

Some suggest the FCC needs a “date certain” for the shutdown of 2G networks, similar to the sunsetting of analog TV networks, Pai said. “The agency is going to have to think about it … to encourage every company to focus their investments on the future, as opposed to maintaining the networks of the past.”

“5G will pop, but it’s too soon at this point to say exactly how, where or when,” Pai said. “If the incumbents aren’t thinking ahead about the nature of their networks, the nature of the services they provide … then there are many other new competitors who are entering.” The recently closed citizens broadband radio service auction underscored changes ahead, he said: “Incumbents are going to have to really think hard and compete hard.” The consensus at the FCC’s September forum on open radio access networks (see 2009140054) was “this technology is not just abstract; it’s real, it’s now,” Pai said. “It offers savings in terms of costs, puts the key to security in the hands of the network operator.”

Wireless networks have a long way to go, and 5G is a start, said AT&T Vice President-Advanced Technology Mazin Gilbert. The goal is terabytes per second (Tbps) connections, he said: Fifth-gen can potentially get to a “theoretical limit” of 10 Gbps. Spectrum is critical, “and we need that, absolutely desperately, to survive into this 6G world,” he said. The next generation will require bands above 300 GHz, he said.

“This is not something that’s going to be happening overnight,” Gilbert said. “This is an evolution.” In the latter stages of 5G, we’ll start seeing robotic surgery, autonomous cars and drones, he said. All will require lower latency than will be possible with 5G and Tbps connections, he said.

Network slicing will be critical, Gilbert said. With an autonomous vehicle, a driver expects a “guarantee” for reliability and ultra-low latency, he said. “You really need to take a slice, and that slice needs to be end to end from the core to the access to the device,” he said: “We’re not there as an industry.” Gilbert said progress is being made on artificial intelligence and machine learning, but “we need a tremendous revolution … to get us to 6G.” Many current algorithms were invented decades ago, he said.

The future of wireless will require “connected machines,” said Sunghyun Choi, Samsung head-advanced communications research. By 2030, Choi expects 500 billion connected machines, which could become the main users of 6G. Many people are working on advancing augmented and virtual reality, which will lead to “a lot more capable” devices by 2030, he said.

Afif Osseiran, Ericsson director-radio communications, said he moderated a panel on 6G 18 months ago, “and it was a bit awkward at that time. People were throwing ideas on the table.” Industry has since started to figure out what 6G will look like and what it will mean, he said. “Sensing will play an incredible part of the future through mobile networking,” he said, "beyond augmented reality.” Machine-to-machine communications will become “more intelligent,” he said, and there will be a “digital representation of everything, of every device.”

Sixth-gen must build on what’s in place, said Karri Kuoppamaki, T-Mobile vice president-technology development and strategy. “You may feel like 5G is old news, but in many ways, it’s still in early stages of development and deployment,” he said: “The vision for 5G, being much broader than previous generations, has not fully materialized yet, not in terms of technology nor in terms of use cases and adoption.” Kuoppamaki said asking questions about 6G now makes sense because a new generation takes time to research and develop: “As history has shown us, we need a new generation roughly once every decade.”