5G and 6G networks: the social and environmental implications of the coming hyperconnectivity

What implications will connections to 5G and 6G mobile networks have for society and the environment? Are the possible consequences taken into account?

Over the past two years, intense work has been done to deploy 5G networks (or 5th generation networks) in different countries around the world. Limited versions of this mobile network technology have been deployed so far, but it should soon reach its full potential. And although mobile operators continue to roll it out, questions are already beginning to arise about what 6G networks should be. This new generation could be operational in 10 years, taking over from 5G, in the same way as previous generations did.

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The techno-optimistic vision

5G and 6G represent a technological leap aimed at increasing global hyperconnectivity, not only of people, but also of the objects around us.

These networks will enable technological advances so that we have a deeper experience of our lives online: that we can, for example, transmit touch, or representations of our body by holography or even the impulses of our brain. And they will enable virtually everything around us to be interconnected.

The objective: to make our industries, agriculture, energy production, logistics or transport more efficient, to make life at home easier, but also to open up new business models.

In the most techno-optimistic imaginations, we talk about the positive effect that hyperconnectivity will have, by betting on digitalization and artificial intelligence, in the search for (technological) solutions to the multiple environmental crises that we are experiencing through , above all, a more efficient use of resources.

The environmental cost of 5G and 6G hyperconnectivity

When you think about the hyperconnectivity and exponential growth in data transmission and processing that this vision promotes, it’s hard to see the material impact this entails.

On the one hand, the impact at different geographical scales (far from the points where these technologies are implemented and benefit from them) and on the other hand at different temporalities (for example, future generations).

The issue of energy and emissions is at the heart of this aspect. The increasing implementation of new technologies goes hand in hand with an increase in total energy consumption.

In a context of climate emergency and energy crisis

It is urgent to take into account the energy consumption necessary to keep the necessary infrastructure of telecommunications networks and data centers operational and to serve an increasingly exacerbated consumption. This is all the more important in a context of climate emergency, when we are immersed in a convulsive energy market and with an increasingly conflicting geopolitics of energy.

From the technology sector, confidence is placed in the fact that new energy efficiency techniques manage to reduce consumption even if the demand for data from 5G and 6G increases. It remains to be seen whether these techniques will be able to compensate for the expected increase in demand.

But the impact cannot be reduced to a purely energy issue or to direct greenhouse gas emissions.

More antennas, more mobiles, more interfaces mean more demand for rare earths and minerals and more waste.

More and more base stations, more antennas and more data processing equipment will be needed for 5G and 6G to work. In addition, the applications that guide the development of these technologies promote the acquisition of new user devices, such as mobile phones compatible with the new generation of networks, virtual reality glasses, brain-machine interfaces and haptic extensions, among others.

Building all this new infrastructure means more pressure on extracting materials, including rare earths and other minerals, more production, more transportation, and more waste that is difficult to recycle. In addition to the geopolitical consequences, local conflicts and the unequal distribution of wealth and the costs that this entails.

The necessary democratic debate on 5G and 6G

Faced with the fragile global socio-ecological situation, on the verge of exceeding or having already exceeded some of the planetary limits, we must critically rethink the need for unlimited growth in data consumption.

Can we, as a society, think of alternatives to the demand for more (digital) connection and (data) speed? Maybe we can start by bridging the digital divide, without creating new demands that involve more and more consumption and more speed.

Obviously, this requires a democratic debate that is not dominated by the impositions of the market. In turn, faced with the most techno-optimistic discourses, it is necessary to assess the impact of technological solutions themselves focused on mitigating environmental crises, taking into account the increased demand for data and the need for equipment and new digital infrastructures that require its implementation.

We need to start viewing digital equipment and infrastructure as a rare commodity, with significant material and energy implications.

To alleviate the increasing pressure in the extraction, production, distribution of materials and equipment, as well as in the management of technological waste, it is necessary to reduce planned obsolescence, increase modularity and extensibility hardware, as well as future-ready design. .

These directions of change are not only technological, but involve political and social interventions. It is important to democratize the debates on digitalisation, and specifically on 5G/6G, to prevent technological development from being dictated solely by the logic of the market.

It is up to civil society, academia and the general public to imagine other possible futures that do not go through the imperative of unlimited growth in digital consumption.

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