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    6G phone networks could be 9000 times faster than 5G thanks to a new technique for transmitting multiple streams of data over a wide range of frequencies
    Futurology

    6G phone networks could be 9000 times faster than 5G thanks to a new technique for transmitting multiple streams of data over a wide range of frequencies


    6G phone networks could be 9000 times faster than 5G thanks to a new technique for transmitting multiple streams of data over a wide range of frequencies

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2451769-6g-phone-networks-could-be-9000-times-faster-than-5g/

    View 17 Comments

    17 Comments

    1. dead_planets_society on

      Wireless data has been sent at 938 gigabits per second, the equivalent of downloading more than 20 average-length movies a second. This could allow for vastly faster information transfer, even in crowded spaces where many people are using their phones.

    2. danielv123 on

      I don’t think the extra bandwidth from using spectrum beyond current mmwave is all that useful. Its not like you can really get it anywhere as it is due to frequency issues.

    6. trucorsair on

      In laboratory experiments mean very little in the real world. How many actually get 5g speeds consistently right now? Just because in a laboratory under controlled conditions you can download “theoretically” 20 movies a second means very little in the real world under “less than ideal settings”, provider dead zones, and interference. Here’s an idea, fully perfect the rollout of 5g first instead of leaving us in the lurch as they go off chasing the next speed unicorn

    8. vwb2022 on

      This is point-to-point transfer using mm wave. By using pairs of optically locked lasers they were able to reduce the gap between different bands to 300 MHz, which allowed them to squeeze in more transmission “lanes”. It doesn’t look like a viable portable setup, but it may be useful for relaying high-bandwidth signal between towers.

      Not sure if using optically locked lasers is something that can be easily built into a base station, seems like a expensive and complicated solution. But there may be other ways to generate a phase-locked signal pair, so at least it may point to a research direction.

    11. ovirt001 on

      With even less range! For reference, the best 6G can do is about 100 meters. Because of the high frequencies it’s far more subject to rain fade than 4G frequency ranges (much like 5G but worse!).

      There is one use for this though – fixed wireless internet service.

    13. Glxblt76 on

      Frankly, going from 4G to 5G didn’t make much difference to me. 4G was already good enough for most purposes when there was good signal, and when signal is bad, it doesn’t matter much whether it is 4G or 5G that is bad, it is just bad.

    14. Fake_William_Shatner on

      Didn’t we already do cross-spectrum multiband? They do it over many twisted pairs so that old copper wires on AT&T’s legacy systems can deliver a lot more data. Unless this is just implementing the spread spectrum techniques in Cell Systems where they didn’t before (which is crazy it’s like two decades to get around to this). Of course, that means you have to KNOW you have that range of frequencies. So instead of discrete cell packets, the whole range is used. So it might improve security. But I assume they need a bit of redundancy as errors can be introduced to affect more than one stream at the same time.

      It would be also interesting if there were broadcast options in here. If livestreaming the same packets — more people get more data. We just have so many people streaming individually there’s not much use for these multicasts.

    15. JamesAdsy on

      I live in London and it’s not always great but I went to a city in Italy and I got the fastest speeds I’d ever seen and was able to download 2 films in about a minute and a half, it was crazy.

      I think places have to catch up first with their infrastructure and the anti 5g crowd are probably a big reason why certain places are lagging behind.

    17. dzernumbrd on

      Can’t see it being much use to me. For me, 4G handles games, youtube, signal, streaming everything. I disable 5g on my s23 ultra because the 4g signal was more reliable and didn’t notice any difference in speed.