In reality, 5G networks achieve average speeds that are much lower than that, but so will the future 6G networks when they are deployed en masse, so the peak speed advantage is what can be objectively measured here.
The research team at the University College of London used a wider than usual combination of frequencies to achieve this breathtaking throughput in the 5–150 GHz frequency range. The effort beats that of Japanese researchers, who recently carried out a 6G network test that achieved 20x the speeds of the current 5G network standard.
This comes to show the huge potential that future 6G networks will have to grow and develop, even when we take into account that laboratory data usually bears little resemblance to actual network buildout by carriers that faces various spectrum and deployment restrictions.
Still, 938 Gbps speeds mean that one can download a set of 20 high-def movies in a second, which for some reason has become the go-to comparison for network standard speeds, as if someone is downloading movies these days. Streaming them in high definition or gaming at higher resolutions is a more likely application.
The 6G standard is still being hammered out, though, and the first commercial network deployments are not expected before 2030 when the final technology set gets approved. Carriers and cellular equipment makers alike will be ready as soon as they get the green light from the 3GPP standardization body, though.
In the meantime, the more research breakthroughs like that of Zhixin Liu’s UCL team are amassed, the more likely it will be that the final 6G standardization outcome is magnitudes better than what is currently expected in comparison with 5G speeds and network features.
