Given the messy, eleventh-hour battle with the FAA over 5G deployment, it’s not too early to start planning a rollout for 6G, experts say. While the U.S. trails Asia in 5G availability, it’s still at the front of the pack, with coverage of roughly 80 percent of the population through home or office in mid-2021, says PwC, assessing only about 12 percent of “device penetration,” or subscriptions. Yet 6G is already being touted as being able to take cloud computing and the mobile Internet to unimagined realms of global connectivity and social equity.

“High-speed services available anywhere, anytime,” is how National Science Foundation senior adviser for technology, innovation and partnerships Thyaga Nandagopal forecasts it for The Wall Street Journal, which writes that “Once truly global, high-speed connectivity is achieved, 6G is expected to provide the structure necessary” for ubiquitous, always-on connectivity.

“There’s no law that says that my 5G phone has to work anywhere in the world,” said FCC Technological Advisory Council chairman Dean Brenner, a former Qualcomm executive. “It requires collaboration and coordination at multiple levels globally.”

“Once truly global, high-speed connectivity is achieved,” notes WSJ, “6G is expected to provide the structure necessary” for that.

And much more. Immersive 3D virtual reality on mobile calls and for wireless meetings, “true” remote surgery, a fully realized metaverse, cloud-connected smart glasses instead of phones will be part of the 6G future, according to this article, which posits social equity — regardless of geography or class — as the result of opportunities to be afforded by 6G.

On a more concrete level, WSJ says Microsoft Research head of networking Ranveer Chandra predicts exponentially increased network capacity, with 6G download speeds possibly rising from 10 to 100 gigabits per second, with latency measured in microseconds, not milliseconds.

This month, Keysight Technologies announced it is the first company to receive an FCC experimental license for developing 6G technology in sub-terahertz frequency bands, between 95GHz and 3THz. Roger Nichols, program manager for California-based Keysight, which manufactures equipment for testing and measurement, told IEEE Spectrum that 6G will be all about “impact on society,” not data rates.

Meanwhile, 9to5 Mac reports that earlier this month FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel told attendees at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that 6G launch planning should begin immediately, even though deployment of the switch-on target date is 2030. Her remarks “follow the embarrassing clash between the FCC and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over the safety of the expanded 5G rollout,” writes 9to5 Mac.

Meanwhile, a PwC report predicts 5G will hit its tipping point in 2023.