6G is coming. Here’s what to expect from the next generation of cellular technology

5G came with Many promises. Telesurgery, where surgeons perform operations thousands of miles away from patients; Self-driving cars that talk to each other and navigate autonomously on highways; New killer apps that will change the world like Uber did.

But the cellular technology behind 4G LTE hasn’t lived up to the hype. At least Netflix loads a little faster.

Networking technology has brought real benefits to the world, from improved latency—reducing the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another—to wider and faster coverage in densely populated urban areas. But most people probably won’t suggest that 5G will bring about as meaningful a change to their lives as many telecom companies have suggested as they try to justify huge spending on their infrastructure buildouts.

Well, get ready to hear that ambitious, forward-looking, and perhaps sometimes misleading language again – this time in the run-up to the advent of 6G, which is being paired with “artificial intelligence” to create a big marketing bonus. Even if technology does not make a difference between night and day for ordinary people like us, the industry is moving its goals.

Last week at Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona, ​​major players like Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia were buzzing about the next generation of mobile networks. It’s still early days, but here’s what to expect.

Four years to go

Mobile network technology improves every 10 years or so, says David Witkowski, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He says we can expect 6G to be rolled out globally by 2030, although some telcos could launch it in specific regions a year or two earlier.

Technical discussions are already underway by industry leaders, including the mobile broadband standards body, 3GPP. As the blueprints take shape, formal requirements for 6G performance will be set by the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), which will be called International Mobile Telecommunications 2030, or IMT-2030. (After a decade-long upgrade cycle, 5G was IMT-2020, 4G was IMT-2010, and 3G was IMT-2000.)

The rollout will begin with new radios on cell towers and buildings and building the computer core that regulates interactions between the network and the public Internet. Naturally, the devices will need to support 6G, so you’ll eventually have to upgrade to a 6G phone in the same way you need a 5G phone.

“Each cell generation is trying to do two things at a very broad level,” Witkowski says. “It tries to overcome the limitations of the previous generation, and tries to add new functions that are important.” Has 5G technology succeeded in these hypotheses? It depends, Witkowski says. “If your goal is to improve your phone’s performance and get faster speeds, 5G is a success because your phone now typically gets 100 to 200 megabits of downlink range.”

For this reason, it is very easy to upload a video to YouTube when you are out and about today. But where 5G had to go was uplink, and that will be a big focus of improvement with 6G. The goal is to keep upload speeds in line with download speeds. However, you can expect the usual improvements in download speed as 6G technology may make use of the terahertz (THz) spectrum – which is higher than the millimeter waves used in 5G, although it has a shorter range – and as with each new generation, the number of devices served by a cell tower will also rise.

Up and down

The uplink is the data You Send to network. Demand for faster upload speeds has been growing for a few years, especially after remote work became the norm during the pandemic and we all came to rely on video conferencing. Today, increasingly large files are sent to cloud servers for AI processing, from security camera footage to AI-powered photo and video editing. Demand for faster uploads will continue to grow as companies introduce new types of mobile devices, such as smart glasses, smart watches, AI-powered wearables, and earbuds, that connect to the cloud.

“We’re uploading a lot to the network now thanks to AI,” says Witkowski. “We’re pushing raw, unanalyzed, unanalyzed data into the cloud and hoping the AI ​​will figure it out. If you think about it in a mobile context, you’re going to have an issue with the amount of data that’s being uploaded onto the network — is the network designed to take into account or handle that level of performance on the uplink?”