Vint Cerf has seen a lot of upgrades to online access since he cowrote the internet’s core Transmission Control Protocol in 1974. So you’ll have to forgive him for a certain glibness in the recap he recently shared of the last 15 years of wireless connectivity: “2G to 3G to 4G to 5G and whatever the heck 6G is.” Yes, 6G. Although 5G wireless broadband is still emerging from a haze of hype , its still largely hypothetical successor was sparking discussion even before President Trump’s February 2019 tweet demanding “5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible.” The “6G and the Future of the Internet” online panel that featured Cerf (since 2005, a VP and the chief internet evangelist at Google) didn’t put 6G in much of a sharper focus. Instead, he used the event hosted by the nonprofit research organization Mitre to suggest two other pieces of technology that play a critical role in the internet’s future: low-Earth-orbit satellites and undersea cables. If Elon manages to get all 24,000 satellites up, in theory it will be impossible to avoid Internet access.” Vint Cerf on Starlink The activation of swarms of low-orbit satellites, Cerf told Mitre Labs chief futurist Charles Clancy, can help address the enormous demand for rural broadband . Meanwhile, the rapid deployment of undersea cables is helping to ensure that no one country can obtain any sort of chokehold on international internet traffic. Cerf said he sees SpaceX’s growing Starlink constellation and other low-orbit systems as a potential breakthrough, thanks to their potential for fast bandwidth, moderate latency, and near-universal access. “If Elon manages to get all 24,000 satellites up, in theory it will be impossible to avoid Internet access because these things, some of them will even be in polar orbits,” he said of SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s ultimate goal for Starlink
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6G internet? Internet pioneer Vint Cerf isn’t buying the hype