6G speed tests see 9000x faster internet that could download 20 movies a second
The future of the internet could be here
There's nothing worse than looking down at your mobile phone and seeing that your lumped with 4G signal, or perish the thought, 3G.
As providers work on the future of mobile telecommunications, 6G is on the way.
While 5G is the current standard, 6G is heralded as the future of zippy internet speeds, but just how fast is it?
Researchers have been conducting speeds tests on 6G, and apparently, reached a whopping 938 gigabits per seconds.
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Those numbers might man nothing to you, but this means 6G could be around 9,000 times faster than your current 5G connection.
Dr. Zhixin Liu and his team at University College London have been conducting tests, reaching this impressive milestone.
In terms of what this internet can do, those speeds suggest you could download the equivalent of 20 full-size movies in under a second.
This is the fastest speed for multiplex data, but in terms of individual signals, the team has even managed to go even further and reach one terabit per second.
Boasting speeds that would even give the Flash a run for his money, it's hard to get your head around the real potential of 6G.
There's still a way to go, as Liu explained the broader signals required to reach these ludicrous speeds involves turning the 'congested road' of 5G into '10-lane highways': "Similar to traffic, wider roads are necessary to accommodate more vehicles."
Liu says the team is currently in talks with smartphone manufacturers and network providers alike, and although he's optimistic that his work will be the foundation that 6G is built on, he admits there are plenty of competitors out there.
There are hopes that 6G will alleviate the problems we still have with signals at big events like festivals or crowded hubs like train stations. 5G has a limited bandwidth, and despite the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum allocated to 5G varying between countries, it tends to be in the low frequencies below six gigahertz and is confined to narrow bands.
The work at UCL involves using more frequencies than before, ranging form five gigahertz to 150, using both radio waves and light.
Work on 6G is ongoing, but back in 2020, China launched a Long March 6 rocket carrying 13 satellites - one was supposedly an experimental satellite to test 6G, dubbed "the world's first 6G satellite."
Currently, the biggest number of 6G patents have come from China, with the company hoping for a rollout in early 2030s.
We might still be a way off from 6G turning our phones into superpowered speedsters, but as as work continues, we're edging closer to the internet of our dreams.