What implications will 5G and 6G mobile network connections have for society and the environment? Are possible consequences being considered?
In the last two years, intense work has been done to deploy 5G networks (or 5th generation networks) in several countries around the world. Limited versions of this mobile networking technology have been deployed so far, but it is expected to reach its full potential soon. And while mobile operators are still rolling it out, questions are already beginning to arise about what 6G networks should look like. This new generation could be operational in 10 years, replacing 5G, just as previous generations have been doing.
The techno-optimistic view
5G and 6G represent a technological leap that aims to increase global hyperconnectivity, not only for people, but also for the objects that surround us.
These networks will allow 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 through holography or even impulses from our brain. And they will make virtually everything around us interconnected.
The aim: to make our industries, agriculture, energy production, logistics or transport more efficient, make life at home easier, as well as open up new business models.
In the most techno-optimistic imaginaries, there is talk of the positive effect that hyperconnectivity will have, relying on digitization and artificial intelligence, in the search for (technological) solutions to the multiple environmental crises we are experiencing through, above all, using resources in a more efficient way. more efficient.
The environmental cost of 5G and 6G hyperconnectivity
When we think about hyperconnectivity and the exponential growth of data transmission and processing that this vision promotes, it is difficult to see the material impact that this entails.
On the one hand, the impact at different geographic 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 question of energy and emissions is central in this regard. 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 involved in order to keep the necessary infrastructure of telecommunications networks and data centers operational and serve an increasingly exacerbated consumption. This is even more important in a climate emergency context, when we are immersed in a convulsive energy market and with an energy geopolitics that is increasingly conflicted.
From the technology sector, confidence is placed in the fact that new energy efficiency techniques manage to reduce consumption, although the demand for 5G and 6G data increases. Whether these techniques will be able to offset the expected increase in demand remains to be seen.
But the impact is not reduced to a purely energy issue or direct emissions of greenhouse gases.
More antennas, more cell phones, 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 cell phones compatible with the new generation of networks, virtual reality glasses, brain-machine interfaces, haptic extensions, among others.
Building all this new infrastructure means more pressure on the extraction of materials, including rare earths and other minerals, more production, more transport, 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, about to surpass or having already surpassed some of the planetary limits, we need to critically rethink the need for unlimited growth in data consumption.
Can we, as a society, think of alternatives to the demand for more connection (digital) and speed (data)? Perhaps we can start by closing the digital divide, without creating new demands that imply ever more consumption and more speed.
Obviously, this requires a democratic debate that is not dominated by market impositions. In turn, given the more techno-optimistic discourses, it is important to assess the impact of technological solutions centered on mitigating environmental crises, taking into account the increased demand for data and the need for equipment and new digital infrastructures that their implementation requires.
We need to start looking at digital equipment and infrastructure as a scarce commodity, with important material and energy implications.
To alleviate the growing pressure on the extraction, production, distribution of materials and equipment, as well as the management of technological waste, it is necessary to reduce planned obsolescence, increase hardware modularity and extensibility, as well as future-proof design.
These directions of change are not just technological, but involve political and social interventions. It is important to democratize debates on digitization, 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 pass through the imperative of unlimited growth in digital consumption.