Low latency drivers
The biggest impact of 6G will be healthcare, industrial automation, and smart cities, he adds.
These are also industries where convergence with Wi-Fi will be particularly useful.
“These verticals demand reliable, low-latency connectivity and seamless transitions between networks across wide areas,” he says. “For example, smart city infrastructure can benefit from 6G-enabled convergence for traffic management and public safety, while healthcare applications will rely on 6G for mission-critical communication and remote diagnostics.”
However, the convergence between cellular and Wi-Fi is not likely to happen soon, such as in the next five years, says Swarun Kumar, professor at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University.
“I view the vision of completely seamless Wi-Fi and cellular as something not in the cards in the near term,” he says. “Enabling such seamless integration would require new standards — governed by different bodies, hardware advances, and changes to network infrastructure — all of which happen over long time scales.”
