Qualcomm's 6G Pitch Has Efficiency Covered. Privacy Is Another Story

SAN DIEGO, CA—Six months after launching a public pitch for 6G at MWC Barcelona , Qualcomm faces two problems with its attempt to advance the next generation of wireless. One is that wireless customers and  even carriers  may not even want to hear about 6G when, in so many ways, 5G is only starting to live up to its early billing in fields like  fixed wireless access . The other is the reception the company's presentation may receive among people who do tune in. 

Sensing Is a Sensitive Issue

Perhaps 6G's most problematic part has already been drawing raised eyebrows among privacy advocates: integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), in which 6G cell sites would use their radio-frequency signals and computing capabilities to detect and analyze their surroundings.

In the past , and again at a 6G Leadership Day here last week, Qualcomm touted such use cases as detecting drones near airports and helping first responders. But the company's executives can't seem to stop themselves from describing ISAC more in lidless-eye terms.

"You want to detect, classify, every single object that you see in the network," said Durga Malladi, EVP and GM for technology planning, edge solutions, and data center. "When you ingest all of that data, you have a real God's-eye view of everything that's happening in the network."

A later demo showed how one of these base stations used cameras to capture more details about drones and other identified flying objects.

During a subsequent Q&A featuring Malladi and Ajit Pai, president and CEO of the wireless trade group CTIA , I asked how the industry planned to address the predictable anxiety among people who see this forecast and think of Flock Safety -level surveillance .

Malladi suggested that widespread acceptance of the sensors on connected cars might be the more accurate parallel (which itself seems debatable ), but said advocates could do better: "We do have an opportunity to explain the technology in the right way."

In a brief interview afterward, Pai noted that the lack of nationwide legislation regulating this kind of bulk data collection doesn't help: "We don't have a federal law on privacy." (In his own rule as FCC chair in the first Trump administration, Pai ended one limited form of federal oversight when the commission quickly abandoned regulating broadband providers .)

"It's difficult to see how it's going to play out," Pai added before acknowledging the legitimacy of these concerns: "People do have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Wireless carriers have often acted as if they think otherwise by retaining cell-site location data for their customers for years , selling it off to data brokers , and then spending years in court trying to get FCC fines for that misconduct tossed.

How Do Always-Seeing Glasses Look to You?

What, then, to make of how much of Qualcomm's 6G vision involves people wearing camera-equipped glasses that constantly feed footage for storage and analysis, by edge-computing services over a 6G network where possible, using on-device AI otherwise.

"People are going to carry multiple personal AI devices beyond the smartphone," said Hemanth Sampath, VP of engineering, in a presentation. "These devices can work together in collaboration."

Again, some of the use cases seemed acceptable in the context of happening in public spaces where people already have cameras out; for example, having a pair of smart glasses recognize a soccer player on the pitch and overlay live stats. But the demos went a bit further than what Qualcomm has shown off before . In this concept, smart glasses and the AI systems they feed into are "continuously capturing images and building context and personal memories," Sampath said without speaking the word "privacy." 

In a subsequent demo, Qualcomm employees showed how this system would let users ask for things like where they last put down a coffee cup and offer AI-generated reminders, such as a notification to take the prescription medicine last seen on a coffee table.

Qualcomm should know how people feel about the prospect of camera eyes that never blink: Five years ago, it showed off a security feature for its Snapdragon smartphone-chipset platform that it called the "always-on camera ." A year later, it rebranded it as an " always-sensing camera ."

The four years since have seen smart glasses both become a mainstream consumer item and an object of intense dislike, especially the eyewear that Meta has been selling . 

The idea that people wearing these glasses would not just indulge in the occasional sneaky recording of strangers but have their output constantly feeding into an AI database should be more than a little disturbing. But the name Qualcomm chose for this feature—AI Recall—which can also tap into all of the information available on a smartphone, suggests the company may need some memory assistance of its own.

To Microsoft customers, that should immediately evoke Windows Recall, the computer-based AI memory tool the company  launched in 2024  amid intense criticism over its security and privacy , then had to (ahem) recall before relaunching it a year later in a considerably reworked form. Many people still aren't prepared to trust this tool .

Efficiency Should Be an Easier Sell

The AI part of Qualcomm's 6G advocacy that should go over better involves getting more out of any given set of frequencies by letting AI manage the network more actively than in current 5G systems . As Pai put it in his speech: "AI is going to make the networks a lot smarter."

Much of that real-time optimization would involve devices and apps on a 6G network making specific requests for speed and latency, allowing the network operator to spread its spectrum more widely than it could today. In one demo, for example, a video game could tell the network that it needed only 12 Mbps of bandwidth. (All of the demos of this capability featured 6G-compatible software and hardware being polite like that.)

Sampath summed up the rewards for each party in the transaction: "You get better coverage, application doesn't stutter."

You could think of this as 5G's network slice concept, but atomized down to the level of individual program or gadget. Or you could think of this transactional approach to connectivity as the network-neutrality debate brought back from the grave. Except that you can count on nothing happening in one of telecom's longest-running policy squabbles while the second Trump administration is around.

Other efficiency arguments for 6G involve more traditional optimization techniques such as reducing overhead, providing wider channels (400MHz instead of 5G's 100MHz ) for network customers, and lowering power consumption at cell sites. Sunil Patil, VP of product management, confessed that power savings could have been an early 5G feature: "We kind of missed it on day one of 5G."

Searching for Still More Spectrum

6G's hardest sell outside privacy may be with policymakers in Washington who have to decide how to field yet another round of requests for new spectrum for yet another new generation of wireless. 

With no greenfield spectrum left, the only way to make more frequencies available to wireless carriers—especially in the "large, contiguous blocks" that 6G advocates are eyeing—is to take it from existing users. And as studies have made apparent for years , many of those incumbents are military and public-safety operators . 

In his talk, Pai suggested that the 4GHz band "could be one of the most consequential" but did not mention the uniforms and insignia worn by many of today's users of those frequencies, who may not see the same need to rush to roll out 6G. 

He also cited a study of 7GHz possibilities nearing completion. But those bands, too, have existing users who can't be easily relocated, including government and commercial satellite operators. That's one reason why 5G advocates who struggled to get the 7GHz neighborhood at least partially cleared for possible redevelopment seven years ago got nowhere. 

And while other countries, particularly China , have latched onto the 6GHz band as a 6G foundation, the US continues to  reserve all of it for unlicensed Wi-Fi use . 

The ambitious timeline Qualcomm stuck to—with the first 6G specs coming in early 2029 and its first commercial 6G modem launch in the second half of 2029—doesn't leave much time to settle on plans to move spectrum around and make whole the users required to vacate it. Malladi acknowledged these difficulties in his own opening remarks: "It's going to be hard, and there are no easy answers." 

Disclosure: Qualcomm covered airfare and lodging for those invited to this event.

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