
Cutting access costs by supporting VPN-over-FWA or standardizing SD-WAN interconnects could save enterprises as much as a quarter of their VPN costs, but neither is provided in 5G or assured in 6G. Enterprises could change that if they applied appropriate pressure.
Reason No. 3: Satellite, private mobile, public mobile, and wireline convergence
One of the barriers to a universal model of VPN connectivity for enterprise sites is that no single technology can cover them all. Another is that VPN availability requirements often require a backup access technology, but switchover to such an alternate is not a feature of the services, and it requires equipment and operations intervention by the enterprise.
One proposed 6G feature is a convergence of wireless, wireline, and satellite, which could in theory address both these points, creating a virtual-access service that could be mapped to all the available options. But whether the 6G standard would cover all the issues is not clear. For example, enterprises and some network vendors have pressed for an open model of public and private wireless, but whether that will even be addressed and how it might work is unknown. Lack of enterprise input in this area is already clearly limiting the chances of an optimum solution.
Reason No. 4: Security
Yes, security is critically important to you. Yes, your company spends a boatload of money on it, and yes, there’s still a perception that risk levels are too high. Why not welcome any 6G security? Because there’s no guarantee that, whatever it is, it will reduce your risk or your own security spending. You can bet that there will be some rubber-stamp salute-the-concept element of security in 6G, but how exactly would network access security improve your own security?
This is a topic that would really benefit from an exchange of views between enterprises and standards-writers. Should 6G improve “intercept” security? Encryption does that. Should it provide authentication? What wireless network doesn’t authenticate users to bill them? So what should, or could, 6G do? Good question, one that requires some back-and-forth to answer.
Reason No. 5: Openness
Yes, standards are supposed to be open, but when 5G standards emerged, it was quickly realized that they didn’t truly open all the elements of 5G infrastructure, which gave rise to the Open RAN movement. Not only that, the “open” goal was aimed more at the network operator than at the network service consumer. In 5G, Open RAN advanced openness to help enterprises deploy private 5G, but should 6G also provide an open model for edge hosting of applications, one that enterprises could adopt in the form of an edge computing service?