Tokio The merging of man and machine is already a reality – at least in the laboratory of the Japanese mobile phone giant NTT Docomo. Chief technologist Takehiro Nakamura and two employees present a small world premiere for the guest from Germany here at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo.
The first person makes a fist and raises their forearm. Sensors in a cuff on his arm read the nerve impulses that the brain sends to the muscles. These are digitized and sent via the Docomo platform to a robot that precisely follows the movements.
But the second clerk involuntarily closes her fingers and moves her arm. With your cuff, the signals are converted back into electrical impulses and sent through the skin into the nerve tracts.
The movements are still very jerky. For Nakamura, however, it is a first taste of applications that could become a reality around 2030 with the super-fast sixth-generation mobile networks, dubbed 6G. With a research budget of one billion euros per year, NTT Docomo is one of the global pioneers.
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The parent company NTT wants to present the prototype for a 6G network as early as 2025 at the Osaka World Expo. The extension of human abilities through technology, the so-called human augmentation, is what Nakamura mentions as an idea for an application. With the new technology, “our network can function as a kind of extended human nervous system”.
Japan: With 6G, the latency drops to 100 microseconds
Behind his promise is a technological quantum leap. 6G networks should be able to transmit 100 times more data than the 5G networks, which are only just being expanded worldwide. According to Mahyar Shirvanimoghaddam from the University of Sydney, this bandwidth would be enough to download 142 hours of Netflix video in the best definition per second.
In addition, the delay in data transfer, the so-called latency, should drop from a few milliseconds in 5G networks to 100 microseconds in the final stage of development.
Japan’s government sees 6G as an opportunity to rebuild the country into a leading power in network technology. According to the Japanese market researcher Cyber Creative Institute, the former pioneer is currently only in third place behind the USA and China with a ten percent share of 6G patents. Suppliers such as Huawei from China or Samsung from South Korea have long been involved.
As early as the end of 2020, the government therefore drummed up the country’s largest corporations in the “Beyond 5G” consortium. Since then, car manufacturers such as Toyota, machine builders and others have been discussing use cases and technical requirements with mobile network operators and network suppliers such as NEC.
6G networks should bring the full networking of the real and virtual worlds
With this concerted action, Japanese companies should once again become pioneers in 6G technology, explains Nakamura. “The Japanese government is very aggressive and hopes to expand development to the whole world.”
“Our network can function as a kind of extended human nervous system.”
(Photo: Martin Kolling)
With 6G, services are suddenly conceivable that previously could only be implemented to a limited extent. For example, people could digitally slip into robots anywhere in the world from their sofa, which, depending on the stage of development, behave like their pilots. Distance training would then also be possible, in which, for example, a dance teacher gives lessons via the Internet.
But industrial applications are becoming more important than entertainment, explains Nakamura. Because high data throughput is a prerequisite for the next level of the Internet of Things, in which billions of devices, machines and sensors for autonomous driving and digitized factories are networked and exchange information.
This not only enables extensive networking of the real with the virtual worlds. The range of the 6G network is also increased through the seamless integration of ground stations, aircraft and satellites. In this way, coverage could not only be extended to sparsely populated regions, but also into the air for air taxis, space, the seas and “under the water,” says Nakamura. Subsea construction activities are also facing digitization.
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However, pioneer Nakamura’s experience with the introduction of new technologies has made it cautious when it comes to predicting the next hit applications. “It’s very difficult to identify the next killer app before or at the very beginning of the introduction of a new network technology,” he explains.
When the Japanese rolled out 3G networks around the turn of the millennium, they mistakenly believed that TV on mobile would be a hit. Instead, with the launch of the iPhone, YouTube and other services prevailed.
5G and 6G: Global competition for network technology is increasing
Only one thing is certain: With the rapid increase in applications in the industrial sector, global competition is intensifying right from the start of development. When 3G networks were introduced, Europe, the USA and Japan were still among themselves. At the start of 4G, the Koreans joined, with 5G also the Chinese companies. “India has also been involved in the discussions for two or three years,” explains Nakamura.
In addition, corporations from all over the world are now having a say in which applications they want. “That makes the process even more complex,” says the Docomo chief technologist. “It’s very difficult to prioritize and find consensus.”
However, whether this succeeds depends more and more on geopolitics. Tensions between the US and China threaten to tear the internet apart in spheres of influence. Nakamura describes a possible division of the world into different 6G standards as a “nightmare”. The development of products and services for different markets would drastically increase costs and possibly slow down development.
In view of this horror scenario, the Japanese remains optimistic that the world of telecommunications will hold together. “It’s too early to say, but right now I don’t see any risk of standards split,” Nakamura said. “In the industry, everyone prefers a single standard.”
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First publication: 12/26/2022, 1:46 p.m.