Event Details

The Networking group @ SCC would like to invite you to join our speaker, Peter Willis, co-author of the book “6G: Evolution or Revolution”, on the 1st May from 11.15am The will be refreshments and pastries, and a chance to talk and network together afterwards.

6G: Evolution or Revolution?

This presentation examines the role of wireless, particularly 6G and Wi-Fi, in the wider digitisation of industry and society. The mobile industry is at a crossroads, 4G was an enormous success, 5G was supposed to be about more than existing mobile data Internet apps. 5G was slated to support all sorts of non-phone devices, from autonomous cars to crop dusters to smart meters to robots in factories with higher bandwidth, lower latency more reliable services. 5G was intended to be part of the wider digitisation of industry and society. But it has been very expensive to deploy and halfway through its lifespan has not delivered new services or revenues. Just as the 6G research programs are ramping up and standards bodies are setting out the plan for 6G the industry is still waiting for a significant return on their 5G investments.

Historically the even Gs have delivered the use cases the odd Gs developed; 2G made 1G’s mobile voice service a mass market product. 4G made 3G’s internet services truly broadband. Will 6G deliver 5G’s use cases? Will 6G be an evolution of 5G or is there an opportunity for revolutionary changes?

The talk will skim through some of the key factors that are part of the 6G picture, including:

• 5G evolution – the key technologies behind 5G and where it is heading
• AI for 6G and 6G for AI
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies and Security
• Non-terrestrial networks
• Industry 4.0 and more

Peter Willis is co-author of the book “6G: Evolution or Revolution” and supports research at Lancaster working on the TUDOR collaborative project developing 3D networks that work seamlessly between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.

Peter worked for BT from 1988 to 2021, when he researched distributed computer networks, designed, installed and operated BT’s first Internet Service and contributed to BT’s 21st Century Network architecture. In BT’s CTO and Research teams, he evaluated many new network technologies, including NFV solutions, Optical Burst Switching, Terabit Ethernet and Terabit Routers. The evaluations went beyond lab testing to include commercial analysis and field trials.