5/6G: Networks of the Future or Defuturing Networks?

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the sustainability of 5/6G networks, emphasizing environmental impacts beyond energy efficiency and proposing design principles that address material limitations and promote sustainable development.

Contribution

It broadens the sustainability perspective for 5/6G networks by including environmental impacts and suggests rethinking design and deployment strategies for future networks.

Findings

Energy efficiency alone is insufficient for sustainability.

Material extraction and disposal pose significant environmental challenges.

Designing for modularity and retrofitting can mitigate environmental impacts.

Abstract

Energy efficiency is at the core of sustainability solutions for 5/6G networks. We argue this is a too narrow perspective on sustainability, as it ignores the effects of the increased traffic demand these networks stimulate and the need for additional equipment that this demand requires. The hope is that techniques to reduce the network's energy consumption in operation will be able to compensate for increases in traffic demand. However, there are more challenges than just reducing the energy that the network requires to function and it is not clear whether higher energy efficiency will be able to cope with increasing demand. The need for more equipment related to deployment of 5/6G networks may result in important environmental impacts: i) increased pressures on material extraction, which imply socio-environmental conflicts, ecosystem destruction and displacement, ii) more manufacturing and shipment, with effects on greenhouse gas emissions and pollution; iii) increased disposal complexities and challenges to recycle components of such equipments. By extending our view on sustainability to include the aforementioned often ignored implications, we are able to identify design requirements and technical pillars of 5/6G networks that need to be rethought. We also devise new paths forward to address these challenges. We argue that it is crucial to think of alternative applications and requirements that aim to serve user demands explicitly, instead of incessantly creating new needs. We also claim that acknowledging material limitations in the production of new hardware is critical, promoting retrofitting and modular design in future network development. The conclusions of this article show that it is time to start rethinking the course of mobile network development in order to align it to current environmental objectives to tackle the climate emergency the world is experiencing.