What to Expect from coming 6G?

6G is the Next Generation of Cellular Tech  

It feels like 5G just came yesterday, but we're already looking ahead to 6G. Here's everything you need to know about it. After a long 5G rollout, we're finally at the point where flagship phones and networks no longer need to advertise the current cellular technology as a feature, it's the standard. To that end, we're seeing 5G coverage improve nationwide, and new form factors like smartwatches are starting to support the network, too. You may have just gotten used to using 5G instead of 4G LTE, but 6G is much closer than you think. When it succeeds 5G in 2030, the next-gen mobile network will focus on upload speeds, AI and radar-like “sensing” of vehicles, devices and people. 5G came with many promises. Remote surgery, where surgeons operate thousands of miles away from patients; driverless cars talking to each other and autonomously navigating highways; new killer apps which would change the world as Uber did. But the cellular technology which succeeded 4G LTE didn't live up to the hype. The networking tech brought real benefits to the world, from improved latency, reducing the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another, to broader and faster coverage in dense urban areas. But most people likely won't point to 5G delivering a meaningful change in their lives like many carriers suggested as they tried to justify mass spending on their infrastructure build-outs.

At MWC 2026, industry leaders like Qualcomm and Nvidia shared their visions for the upcoming 6G mobile network, with a boatload of corporate partners in tow. For the average user, the buildout of 6G infrastructure and companies working together isn't exciting. You want to know what you'll actually be able to do with 6G. We now have that answer, and it's pretty exciting. Right now, 6G is currently in development and in the research and study phase. It will continue into 2027 and 2028, when pre-commercial devices will be tested. Then, the commercialization of 6G will happen the following year. This means you'll be able to start using 6G at the end of this decade, with the mobile network likely going mainstream in the 2030s. It sounds far away, but it'll come sooner than you think, bringing new AI and XR experiences with it. Well, get ready to hear that aspirational, forward-looking, and sometimes maybe deluded language again, this time in the lead-up to 6G, which is being paired with “AI” to create a marketing bingo bonanza. Even if the tech won't deliver a night-and-day difference to average folks like us, the industry is moving the goalposts. At Barcelona, key players like Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Nokia kicked off the hype about the next G of mobile networks. Everything goes back to artificial intelligence these days, and 6G is no exception. However, there are signs that the AI-connected world we're building will demand more from our mobile networks, and that's where 6G comes in. Specifically, global wide area network (WAN) traffic is expected to jump by between three and seven times by 2034, compared to 2023 traffic data. AI is also going to account for roughly 30% of all network traffic, according to current projections.

The AI takeover will demand faster, lower-latency connections, hence the need to deploy 6G, but it's about more than just raw traffic spikes. Industry leaders see a future where AI agents become the centerpiece of mobile ecosystems. Right now, your phone is the heart of your technology portfolio, and it connects with earbuds, smartwatches, tablets, laptops and more. In the future, AI agents might be orchestrating these hardware categories, connecting them all with streamlined software. This sounds pretty interesting, but if AI agents are working across multiple wireless devices at once, they need fast connections. That's why 6G is being built to address these traffic and speed needs. We're expecting 6G to offer a five times greater traffic capacity than 5G, and 50% higher spectral efficiency for uplink and downlink connectivity. In simple terms, this means your AI devices will be able to connect with each other and cloud servers faster than ever before. 6G will deliver connected experiences that aren't currently possible due to latency limitations. Mobile networking technology evolves every 10 or so years. We can expect 6G to be deployed globally by 2030, though some carriers 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, the 3GPP. As blueprints take shape, the official requirements for 6G performance will be set by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), which will be called International Mobile Telecommunications-2030, or IMT-2030. (Following the decade-long upgrade cycle, 5G was IMT-2020, 4G was IMT-2010, and 3G was IMT-2000.)

6G will elevate public infrastructure in the next decade. 6G will also enable a sensory network which can use RF signals and drones to map out environments, powering new kinds of infrastructure, like self-driving car networks. As self-driving car systems like Waymo become mainstream, you'll need a fast, low-latency network to connect cars to control centers. You'll also need to be able to process data from sensors like cameras, radar, or LiDAR, in a near instant, and 6G will make that possible. The rollout will start with new radios on cell towers and buildings and the build-out of the computer core that orchestrates interactions between the network and the public internet. Naturally, devices will need to support 6G, so you'll eventually have to upgrade to a 6G phone the same way you needed a 5G phone. Every generation of cellular attempts to do two things at a very broad level. It attempts to overcome the limitations of the previous generation, and it attempts to add new functionality which is considered to be important. If your goal was simply to have your phone perform better and get faster speeds, then 5G is a success because your phone now is typically getting in the range of 100 to 200 megabits of downlink. That's why it's pretty easy to load up a YouTube video when you're out and about today. But where 5G had to cut corners was the uplink, and this will be a big focus of improvement with 6G. The goal is to make upload speeds symmetrical with download speeds. Even so, you can expect the usual improvements in download speed as 6G may tap into the Terahertz (THz) spectrum, higher than mm wave used in 5G, though with even shorter range, and, like with every new generation, the number of devices served by a cell tower will also go up.

Robotics is another emerging technology that's not too far away, with companies like Tesla going all-in on humanoid robots which could be controlled remotely. Just like with self-driving cars, robots need a fast and efficient network to work properly. 6G's biggest feature might be its capacity upgrade, as new uses for mobile networks like AI, self-driving cars, and robotics will increase congestion. 5G isn't fast enough, nor does it have enough capacity for the expected traffic spikes. 6G aims to solve both of those problems, and you can expect to see advances in autonomous vehicles, robotics, AI, and spatial computing coincide with the upgraded mobile network when it's ready for a commercial release. Another big feature you'll hear around 6G is “sensing,” also called joint communications and sensing, or JCAS. Think of a network functioning as a radar system, where it can infer the presence of objects and people as high-frequency radio signals bounce back to towers. This could allow operators to know precise locations of objects, their shape and size, how fast they're moving, and what kind of materials they may be made of. “There's a lot of discussion around using the 6G infrastructure when it's deployed to detect the presence of drones flying through the air, vehicles on the ground,” says Richard Burbidge, principal technologist at the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. “I wouldn't say everyone is convinced of the business at the end of the day, but some operators see there's going to be business in offering that kind of sensing information to third parties for whatever applications it could be used for.” Naturally, there are significant privacy implications for a network that can precisely detect people, objects and movement without the need for a camera, a similar parallel we've seen with Google's Soli technology, which can detect human movements using radar alone. There's plenty more on the horizon for 6G, whether that's improving power efficiency so that the cell network doesn't consume a large chunk of the global electrical grid or more deliberate integrations with satellites to plug the coverage gaps in terrestrial networks. 

6G will make XR and spatial computing mainstream. Speaking of connected experiences, 6G will go a long way in making mixed-reality XR experiences mainstream. Currently, devices like Meta Ray-Ban Display or Samsung Galaxy XR are bottlenecked by how much data can be transferred to deliver high-quality video, AI processing, and gaming performance. Then it arrives, 6G will improve these experiences by providing higher uplink speeds capable of supporting multiple 4K or 8K video streams. 4G LTE is still in use today in conjunction with 5G, so don't expect 5G to disappear once 6G starts rolling out. Carriers have made it clear that they want 6G to stand on its own two legs, without the kind of previous-gen dependence that we saw with 5G. Uplink is the data you send to the 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 videoconferencing. Today, increasingly large files are being sent to cloud servers for AI processing, from security camera footage to generative AI photo and video editing. The demand for faster uploads will continue to grow as companies trot out new kinds of mobile devices, like smart glasses, smartwatches, AI wearables, and earbuds, that plug into the cloud. We are uploading a lot more to the network now because of AI. We're shoving unparsed, unanalyzed raw data to a cloud and hoping that AI will figure it out. If you think about it in a mobile context, then you have a problem of how much is being uploaded to the network. 5G also expanded Fixed Wireless Access, with carriers providing 5G home internet instead of fiber optic or cable connections. This will expand with 6G; it's another reason why upload speeds will become a main focus.

Outside of uploads, you'll likely hear a lot more about AI being “integrated into the network.” It's not the same as AI managing the 6G network itself, though that's a separate talking point. Take streaming a movie as an example. You're typically not receiving that stream from your streaming provider's servers, like Netflix. Instead, it comes from a content distribution node, hosted by your internet service provider. ISPs have public distribution nodes all over the network. When you're talking to your AI chatbot, usually your request is sent through your provider to your chatbot company's data centers far away, then it comes back to you, likely with a bit of a delay. With 6G, we may see “AI nodes” in the cellular network, which serve specific regions, distributing the load so that there's not one data center handling millions of requests, a process called edge compute. If we ever get to the point where we have, say, self-driving 18-wheelers, the smart thing to do would be to put the 6G network along the major highways so that at any given time, the self-driving truck is only talking to an edge device that is along the highway. They don't have to clock out into the network; it cuts down on load, and the network can speed up response time. Since most XR glasses and headsets rely heavily on streaming, tethering, or cloud processing to provide features, a high-speed and low-latency mobile network like 6G could make use cases like game streaming or remote desktop control actually usable. It's all about cutting down the time you have to wait for your devices to talk with your phone and the cloud to return a response. So, when you look at something and ask a question while wearing camera-equipped smart glasses, the response will feel nearly instant when 6G arrives.

With 6G already an early focus at events like Mobile World Congress, we're seeing companies hyping it up just like they did 5G. Qualcomm's 6G blog says 6G “represents new paradigms” and suggests new use cases, such as “hologram telepresence, collaborative robots, human augmentation and deeper immersion to the digital and virtual worlds.” There are a lot of lessons learned from the marketing hype of 5G and that a big part of 6G will be a focus on the practical, not the fabulous. We see that with every generation. Especially the earlier in the process, the more hype there is, because the world is our oyster. We'll build a network that can do everything: flying cars, remote tele-surgery. We're also likely to see yet another wave of unfounded health fears surrounding 6G. Every decade, when carriers apply for permits to build towers, there are objections to the process from communities who believe that cellular technology is dangerous, even if there's plenty of evidence that it's safe. 

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'Blackwater' lakes and rivers are releasing ancient carbon into the atmosphere

 Congo based 'Blackwater' lakes and rivers are releasing ancient carbon into the atmosphere 

Deep in the Congo Basin, vast peatlands quietly store enormous amounts of Earth’s carbon, but new research suggests this ancient vault may be leaking. Scientists studying Africa’s largest blackwater lakes discovered that significant amounts of CO2 bubbling into the atmosphere come not just from recent plant life, but from peat that has been locked away for thousands of years. Carbon that has been buried in the Congo Basin's peatlands for millennia is seeping into lakes and rivers. Why this is happening remains unclear, but researchers warn that tropical peatlands could be nearing a tipping point. Blackwater lakes and rivers releasing carbon is up to 3,500 years old. Previously, scientists thought this carbon was safely stored in the surrounding peatlands, but the research reveals that's not the case. The finding contradicts the long-held assumption that old peat carbon remains trapped underground, suggesting that some tropical peatlands could switch from being carbon sinks to major carbon sources. "We are now faced with a 30-million-tonne question: we need to determine if this is just a small, natural leakage of ancient carbon, or the onset of broadscale destabilization," study lead author Travis Drake, a carbon biogeochemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), said.

At the confluence of the Fimi and Kasai rivers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dark water from forest landscapes meets water from the savannahs, colored red by iron oxides. Tropical swamps and peatlands are critical players in Earth's carbon cycle and, by extension, the global climate. In regions such as the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, and the wetlands of Southeast Asia, thick layers of partially decomposed plant material build up over time. Together, these ecosystems lock away roughly 100 gigatonnes of carbon. At the center of Africa, the Congo Basin contains one of the largest and most significant of these carbon reserves. Although its peatlands and swamps cover just 0.3 % of the planet's land surface, they store about one third of all carbon held in tropical peatlands worldwide. Despite their importance, these remote ecosystems have not been extensively studied. Large parts of the central Congo Basin are difficult to reach, and travel to isolated lakes and swamps often requires boats or traditional pirogues. As a result, their influence on the global climate has remained uncertain. Drake and his colleagues have conducted three research trips to the Congo Basin over the past four years. Specifically, the team traveled to the Cuvette Centrale, a 56,000-square-mile (145,000 square km's) region of forests and swamps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which holds Earth's largest known tropical peatland complex. Situated in the heart and to the south of the Cuvette Centrale are two large blackwater lakes known as Lake Mai Ndombe and Lake Tumba, while a major blackwater river, the Ruki River, flows west-northwest across it to meet the Congo River.

Measurements show that substantial amounts of CO2 are escaping from both lakes into the atmosphere. However, the origin of that carbon was not what scientists anticipated. While some of the emissions come from recently grown plant material, up to 40 % of the CO2 originates from peat which accumulated thousands of years ago in nearby ecosystems. Researchers determined this by analyzing the age of the dissolved CO2 using radiocarbon dating (radiocarbon dating). "We were surprised to find that ancient carbon is being released via the lake," explains lead author Travis Drake. "The carbon reservoir has a leak, so to speak, from which ancient carbon is escaping," adds co-author Matti Barthel, research technician in SAE. Blackwater lakes and rivers contain high levels of decaying plant debris, or dissolved organic carbon, which gives them their black color. This dissolved organic matter, together with direct inputs of CO2 from the surrounding swamps and forests, creates supersaturated concentrations of CO2 in lakes Mai Ndombe and Tumba and in the Ruki River. As a result, these waters emit enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Crucially, however, none of the CO2 was previously thought to originate from the Cuvette Centrale's ancient peat, as these deposits, protected from decomposition by their oxygen-depleted, waterlogged environment, were believed to be highly stable. But Drake and his colleagues found otherwise. Their results showed that a significant proportion of the CO2 escaping the Cuvette Centrale's blackwater bodies is from peat carbon that is between 2,170 and 3,500 years old. "We were very surprised because we fully expected the carbon dioxide to be modern," Drake said. The researchers drew their conclusions from measurements they took at Lake Mai Ndombe in 2022 and 2024, and at Lake Tumba and the Ruki River in 2025. They accessed Lake Mai Ndombe with small boats, which was difficult due to strong winds that almost capsized them, Drake said.

Most locations are almost impossible to reach by land. Therefore, small dinghy boats were used to access these remote sites in the central Congo Basin. "The ecosystems remain in relatively pristine condition," he said. "There are some small settlements and villages scattered around Lake Mai Ndombe, but they are far and few between". Over the past decade, a team led by ETH Zurich has been investigating the Congo Basin more closely. Their work has already revealed unexpected findings, including the Ruki River, one of the darkest blackwater rivers on Earth. Lake Mai Ndombe is more than four times larger than Lake Constance, and its water resembles strong black tea. It is bordered by vast swamp forests and largely undisturbed lowland rainforest growing atop deep peat deposits. As plant debris and soil organic matter wash into the lake from surrounding forests, they tint the water a deep brown. The team measured sediments, greenhouse gases, dissolved organic carbon and dissolved inorganic carbon, which includes dissolved CO2, bicarbonate ions (HCO3–) and carbonate ions (CO32-). Later, in the lab, the researchers analyzed their samples with high-precision spectrometry to separate modern carbon from plants and older carbon from soils. "Because the organic carbon in the lake was modern, we assumed the inorganic carbon would be too, so we initially just analyzed a single sample to confirm," Drake said. But when about 40% of the inorganic carbon in that sample turned out to be millennia old, the team decided to test the remaining samples. The results were consistent across Lake Mai Ndombe, so the researchers returned to the Cuvette Centrale to sample Lake Tumba and the Ruki River. Both contained high levels of inorganic carbon derived from ancient peat, suggesting that microbes in the region are breaking down peat carbon into CO2 and methane, which then seep into lakes and rivers before wafting into the atmosphere.

Previously, scientists believed that carbon stored in Congo Basin peat remained locked away for extremely long periods and would only be released under specific conditions such as extended drought. Exactly how this old carbon is being freed from undecomposed plant matter remains uncertain. Researchers also do not yet know the precise pathways which allow it to move from peat soils into lake water. Understanding whether this release signals a destabilizing shift or reflects a natural balance offset by new peat formation is now a key research question. The Cuvette Centrale is estimated to hold one-third of the carbon stored in tropical peatlands globally, equivalent to about 33 billion tons (30 billion metric tons). It's possible that recent losses of ancient peat carbon are linked to the formation of new peat deposits, in which case the phenomenon might be nature returning to a state of equilibrium. But it's also possible that climate change is destabilizing long-buried deposits and that the Congo Basin's peatlands are nearing a tipping point. Climate is not the only factor which could disrupt this system. Land use changes may pose an even greater threat. The population of the Democratic Republic of Congo is projected to triple by 2050, increasing demand for farmland and leading to further forest clearing. Deforestation can intensify drought conditions, potentially keeping lake levels persistently low. "We all know the analogy whereby forests are the green lungs of the Earth," says Barthel. "They are not only responsible for gas exchange like our lungs, however, but they also evaporate water through their leaves, thereby enriching the atmosphere with water vapor. This promotes cloud formation and precipitation, which in turn feeds rivers and lakes."

The researchers will analyze water trapped in the Congo Basin's peat to explore if and how microbes are releasing ancient carbon. "This pathway highlights a critical vulnerability," Drake said. "If the region experiences future drought, this export mechanism could accelerate, potentially tipping these massive carbon reservoirs from a sink into a major source to the atmosphere." The escape of ancient carbon could point to a broader concern. Environmental changes driven by climate change may be triggering processes which can increase carbon release. If conditions become drier, peat soils may dry out more frequently and for longer periods. This allows oxygen to penetrate deeper into the peat layers, accelerating microbial breakdown of once stable organic material. As decomposition speeds up, more CO2 from this enormous carbon store could enter the atmosphere. "Our results help to improve global climate models, because tropical lakes and wetlands have been underrepresented in these models so far," as stated by researcher. "Ultimately, we aim to confirm whether this process is happening across the entire Cuvette Centrale and quantify oxidation rates to determine if this leakage is a natural baseline or a sign of instability in this large carbon reservoir," Drake said.

Beyond CO2, the team also studied emissions of nitrous oxide and methane from Lake Mai Ndombe. In a parallel study, they found that water levels strongly influence how much methane escapes. When lake levels are high, microorganisms more effectively consume methane before it can reach the atmosphere. During the dry season, when water levels drop, methane is broken down less efficiently and larger amounts are released. "Our fear is that climate change will also upset this balance. If droughts become longer and more intense, the blackwater lakes in this region could become significant sources of methane that impact on the global climate," says ETH Professor Jordon Hemingway. "At present we do not know when the tipping point will be reached." These results sharpen our understanding of how tropical peatlands and blackwater lakes influence global climate dynamics. They also highlight the urgency of protecting Congo Basin wetlands and limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The research was conducted as part of the TropSEDs project led by ETH Zurich and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Louvain in Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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