There is AI, robotics and other futuristic tech in action at the ongoing India Mobile Congress, but one particular technology has already captured the zeitgeist at Asia’s biggest telecom and technology event - 6G.
Forget the fact that the technology is still at least 6 years away from rollout, but the buzz couldn’t be helped since PM Modi inaugurated the event on Tuesday remarking how India is already the world’s second-biggest 5G market and is now working fast on 6G technology.
6G was all the buzz at the Congress on day two as well, right from the International 6G Symposium, inaugurated by Scindia who said that India is now poised to shape the future of 6G with standards that are inclusive, accessible, and affordable for all, to Ericsson which demonstrated AI compute energy consumption in future 6G networks.
India has already set an ambitious target for its tech ecosystem — its Bharat 6G Alliance, a network of stakeholders driving research and development, aims to lead the pack in 6G field trials and contribute at least one-sixth of global 6G standards in the next five years (It is no coincidence that the World Telecom Standardisation Assembly’s first ever conference in Asia is concurrently being held in Delhi alongside the India Mobile Congress).
And Indian tech majors are gung-ho. HFCL managing director Mahendra Nahata said, “HFCL is well placed to lead this multi-year transformation journey from 5G to 6G. We’re driving the future of 6G through our active contributions and pioneering efforts in integrated sensing and communication and energy efficiency. We have filed 17 patents in 5G and 6G domains and are committed to remaining at the technological forefront in the future.”
Of course, it won’t be a cakewalk. 6G requires a massive investment — Govt allocation right now is just 10,000 crore rupees. There will also be a massive ramp up required — from an innovation point of view as well as infra and funds point of view.
6G is promising speeds unto 100 times faster than the present 5G. That would mean latency (delay in audio and video) falling to just microseconds, possibilities for no-time lag remote medical surgeries or maybe even a factory worker who can operate his machinery from home or a farmer who can till his land from afar using a robot (WFH indeed!). With 6G you could turn yourself into life-size 3D holograms that could be ''holoported''—that means goodbye to sketchy Zoom calls where you have to keep repeating ''Am I audible?” and hello to virtually being in the presence of someone else at a discussion or meeting or party through your digital twin—even if in reality you are thousands of kilometres away.
Also in the offing would be 16K video streaming, advanced driver assistance systems (navigation) with 4K maps, multi-modal, multi-location AR/VR applications.
“6G will catapult India’s internet consumption to an all-new level. It will usher in a new era not just in internet speed but also data consumption,” said Ankit Goel, founder chairman of the Space World Group. The first trails of 6G is expected in four years time, as timelines by South Korea — though it is not clear whether any other nation (like China) might leapfrog and surprise us all. Or would it be India?