„From 5G to 6G – connectivity in the face of global crises“ is the title of this year’s conference day on November 10th 2022 – what contribution can 5G or 6G make with regard to acute issues such as sustainability, climate and environmental protection?

ICTs need to address major sustainability challenges by reducing the emissions in other sectors of society (handprint), while also cutting their own emissions (footprint). We are not there yet – the ICT sector’s energy consumption and emissions keep increasing. There is an urgent need to define new sustainability metrics to assess communication systems and services. There is an urgent need to develop sustainable solutions to solve major sustainability challenges.

5G is regarded as a key technology for digital transformation. What do you think has been achieved so far?

5G has primarily offered enhanced mobile broadband to end users on the move or to households. 5G offers fixed wireless access to compete with fibre connections. Local private 5G networks are emerging to serve closed user groups in specific locations, such as factories and harbors, based on local spectrum availability.

Currently, there is still a lot of research being done on digital innovations that also take advantage of the full performance spectrum of 5G – which 5G applications do you think should be a particular focus?

Local mobile communication networks as a new deployment model present a major paradigm shift. The collection of data through sensors and other data sources to optimize the resource usage in different sectors of society should be the focus. We need to develop new sustainability principles for mobile communications – Total consumed mobile data is not sustainable but less is more. In addition to the enablement effect of helping other sectors to absorb more, mobile communications’ own sustainability burden needs to be taken seriously.

Click here for Overview of 3rd 5G.NRWeek.