Mobile World Congress 2026 kicked off Monday in Barcelona, and I know one thing that will be absolutely dominating the conversation.
No, not AI (well, probably still a little) – but 6G. That is right. The standard formally known as 6G is still being established. But that won't stop the industry from getting the hype machine warmed up.
Which is funny, because we've seen this movie before. And the ending was lowkey kind of… sh*t.
Anyone else remember 2019? 5G arrived with marketing that made it sound like the Second Coming. The hype was unreal.
We were promised a shiny new world: self-driving cars, remote surgery, smart cities, AR concerts beamed directly to your face, downloads so fast you'd get 100GB while sitting at a red light.
Telecoms blitzed federal officials. Hardware vendors sold billions in infrastructure. Countries literally competed in a "race to 5G" like it was the landing of a new planet and somehow became a matter of national security. The PR was impeccable, mwah, chefs kiss, 10/10 no notes diva.
And then... nothing. Well, not nothing. We got slightly faster internet.
Sometimes. If you're lucky.
And standing in the right spot.
Five years into the 5G rollout, where are the revolutionary applications? Not here.
Remote surgery requires reliability 5G can't consistently deliver. Autonomous vehicles rely on GPS and LiDAR, not 5G. Smart cities are still mostly concepts. And the mmWave spectrum that was supposed to enable all this magic turned out to be expensive, limited in range, and easily blocked by buildings, trees, and fkn rain.
Most of us are paying higher phone bills for speeds that aren't dramatically better than 4G. The coverage is still spotty. And the infrastructure costs have been astronomical. So why the heck are telecoms now desperately trying to justify those investments while already pivoting to hype the next thing?
This isn't really unique to wireless technology.
It's a pattern. Tesla promised full self-driving "next year" for nearly a decade. The metaverse was supposed to revolutionise everything and then absolutely carked it. AI was going to replace all jobs immediately until everyone realised it mostly just makes convincing-sounding nonsense.
The formula is always the same: promise a revolutionary future, generate massive hype, secure investment and regulatory favour, deliver incremental improvements, and then start hyping the next thing before people notice the gap between promise and reality.
Will 6G be different?
It’s hard to imagine it will. The industry is already following the same playbook with vague descriptions of transformative applications and absolutely zero acknowledgment that we're still waiting for 5G to deliver on its original vision.
Ericsson's CEO has notably toned down the rhetoric, now calling 6G an "evolution of 5G" rather than a revolutionary leap. Which is... probably more honest? But also feels like quietly admitting that maybe we oversold the last one.
The technology will improve, speeds will gets faster and latency will drop. But will it fundamentally change how we live and work? Will it enable the sci-fi future we're being sold? History suggests, not really.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
