As the fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications systems starts being commercially deployed, the research community has shifted its focus towards the study of fundamental solutions for the 2030 era, i.e. 6G. It is not yet clear what 6G will entail exactly, but it will certainly include relevant technologies considered immature for 5G including those related to the way data is collected, processed, transmitted and consumed within the wireless network. New Key Performance Indicators (KPI) drivers will be needed which complement and improve the already challenging 5G-related KPIs. Societal megatrends and United Nations sustainability goals, including lowering Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, emerging new technical enablers as well as ever-increasing productivity demands are also key 6G drivers.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – the United Nations standardization body for information and communication technologies – started recently to shape the 6G vision. The ITU vision shall be ready by 2023 and will be followed by the identification of the requirements for the mobile communications system. 6G research will certainly look into the challenging requirement of enabling mobile data rates up to 1 Tbit/s per user. This will be possible through the efficient utilization of the spectrum in the THz frequency bands, which, in turn, will potentiate the merging of communications with sensing and 3D imaging by taking advantage of the micrometer wavelengths.

New services augmenting the human communication potential such as telepresence and mixed reality will be made possible by means of high-resolution imaging and sensing, accurate positioning, wearable displays, specialized processors and high-performance wireless networks. Current smartphones will be replaced by pervasive Extended Reality (XR) experiences with lightweight glasses delivering unprecedented resolution, frame rates, and dynamic range – e.g. Facebook and Ray-Ban have recently released their first smart glasses⁽¹⁾, which represent a remarkable step towards this vision. Humanoid robots and cyberpets will also make part of our daily lives and communicate with us using natural language.

In the Internet of Things, the emergence of a huge number of different types of devices and applications demanded by multiple verticals will set further diversifying system requirements. Machine type communications with real-time sensing capabilities and different data rates and total capacity requirements will set new challenges to the overall communications system. At this early stage of 6G development, the research community should take a bold approach to look at alternative system architectures and service delivery mechanisms underneath. This is the right time to critically challenge current 5G systems network architectures and try to find alternative models for network operation.

Our society is increasingly relying on digital automated services hidden from humans. The fourth industrial revolution will be a reality by 2030, characterized by automated processes, distributed, operating in real-time, driven by artificial intelligence, and demanding permanent wireless connectivity. Connectivity everywhere and at all times will be as important as having electricity. In this scenario, it becomes irrelevant who builds connectivity, who owns the networks, or who owns the spectrum licenses. Ubiquitous networks will be built by different operators for different purposes. Local specialized services with various connectivity mechanisms will become popular. At the same time, large coverage area networks will be needed for reliability and service continuity, including Satellite. Therefore, growing needs for local specialized services and networks need to be potentiated, but at the same time we need to make sure that large area mobile network operators (MNOs) will not be threatened as the global coverage relies completely on them. Hence, future needs may cause some conflicts of interests, which will have to be sorted out.

The 5G promise was to enable all facets of society with digital services by connecting things and processes to the networks. However, it appears that similarly to earlier mobile generations, even though a new mobile cellular G emerges every ten years, the market transformation takes 20 years to fruition. This is evidenced by the slower than expected take-up of new wireless services in vertical business areas in the 5G era and the expectation that 6G will provide the connected digital services in large scale.

The 5G/6G technological and architectural features that will shape the new access, networking, and management domains in mobile communications promise countless opportunities for service innovation and business efficiencies, creating an unprecedented impact on multiple vertical sectors. The role of 5G/6G is to cognitively connect every feasible device, process, and human to a global information grid. We are therefore only now at the brink of an information revolution, and new digitalization markets will offer significant revenue expansion possibilities for those who react fastest to new opportunities.

Portugal has been recognized as an early adopter of new technologies and the Portuguese are known to love using them. There is an unexpected delay in deploying 5G but, since the main characteristics of 6G rely on the experience of using 5G, it is important that Portugal deploys, as fast as possible, a set of communications living labs focused on the vertical areas of economy including industry, agro-food, sea, logistics, health, and mobility corridors. A structured policy should also be implemented for studying and defining 5G/6G networks and services along with its impact on the country’s digitalization and creation of green solutions.