Holograms, lonely people, augmented reality, and Samsung trying to replace its customers with robots. Oh, and 6G by 2028; that would be the gist of a newly released white paper from Samsung Research talking about “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All“.
Which is a fair title given the report's overall content but hardly sets up a convicing claim that the sixth generation of mobile networks won't be on the drawing board for well over a decade this time around. As that argument comes down to the fact that it usually takes around ten years between early rollouts of such tech.
Samsung is now making 6G predictions
Whereas the 3GPP's work on 5G NR progressed at its own pace, and because of that, we're now getting networks purpose-built not just for streaming Netflix in 4K but everything from remote surgeries and large-scale IoT to driverless vehicles and a bunch of other existing tech waiting to change the world. For the first time in the history of telecommunications, the best and brightest were allowed time to think about how the critical infrastructure they're in charge of could benefit everyone in the long term. On top of ensuring 5G has enough clear upgrade lines and alternatives to both those and initial deployment that it might as well be considered 6G.
In case you haven't noticed, the world is still in the middle of a global pandemic and Samsung will soon be reporting its first quarterly earnings that are making investors kind of nervous. Despite the fact that last week's guidance was decent enough to beat street estimates. But a detailed breakdown of how Samsung has been spending money during the Great Lockdown probably won't help you make rational decisions about its stock, which is why it's now making suggestions that anyone will be making money from yet another completely new generation of technology by the end of this decade.
If you need additional proof, here's an actual white paper on 5G from five years ago published by that same branch. So, we'll just have to assume Samsung knows the difference between a forecast based on industry trends and a booklet disseminated ahead of another touchy afternoon with investors.
