The point about remote surgery is that it does not benefit from a roll-out of 5G and is possible using existing connectivity.
Quantum computing and machine learning do not require high wireless bandwidth to achieve outcomes. The bottleneck for input data streams is not helped by wireless network speeds. Fibre is less prone to error and faster while not causing the thermal impacts or EM interference of wireless networks. Put simply, fibre is much more efficient for quantum computation.
Those military applications you're talking about do not require a roll out of 5G for civilians. If you're looking to penetrate walls and look beneath the sea surface then there are many options and ranges in the spectrum that you can work with; and since the applications are specialised you wouldn't have to operate with the same restrictions as telecommunication services.
There are plenty of better uses of Australian research funds than looking at increasing wireless data transmission rates since it's really not cutting edge stuff. We already know of higher frequencies that we can access and the fundamentals of modulating those transmissions. Engineering the hardware to be cost effective, reliable and portable may be where the money is poured into if Australia wanted to take on "6G" research, but the outcomes would ultimately only lead to more consumer products that people don't need so it would be wasteful spending.
China talking about rolling out 6G in 2030 is just propaganda. That is not to say that they won't achieve it or that it's fantasy. They are expecting people to think "wow, we're just rolling out 5G and they're already talking about 6G". The masses will wrongly believe that it's a great technological feat and congratulate China due to this misconception, but the truth is that the technology would have been the easy part. The difficulty is in organising the roll-out effort, but a cashed-up China can afford it.
Australia should focus on researching technology that increases our overall productivity or standard of life, such as efficient power generation or desalination processes.
Enterprises are better served by the government ensuring that high speed data links are easy to deploy. In hindsight, all our streets should have been designed to allow new cabling to be added at minimal cost. That way the private sector could have had more incentive to roll out fibre networks. The manner in which some streets were temporarily butchered to cable for the NBN should never need to happen again, but alas the government doesn't think long-term enough when planning infrastructure and cuts corners.
Wireless NAS on 5G R2 is not a sufficiently exciting reason for a 5G roll-out. The bandwidth used by productivity tools are minimal and many applications are "on the cloud", meaning that wireless devices hardly need to upload large files. The usual office worker using Google Docs, Office 365 and Outlook would not see significant productivity gains - their apps are not resource intensive. Those who use multimedia extensively while outdoors like real estate/strata agents, certain types of tradies, journalists and police typically have workflows that negate any benefit of rapidly uploading multimedia files to HQ.
I'm not convinced about the massive competitive advantage from the technology and still think 5G is another product for those wanting toys rather than tools.
Now, having said all that, this doesn't mean that I don't think that there is a commercial benefit from coaxing the herd into consuming 5G or 6G. I wouldn't kid myself that 5G is some kind of productivity machine, sign of a new technological era or even that 6G will be like "5G on steroids".
I generally agree with your take on TLS, especially: "But without a leading 5g/6g network tls sp would collapse as optus starts to compete"
Indeed, like the previous roll-out, the winner this time around will be the telco that harvests the largest amount of consumers from the herd while it's a hot topic. If TLS is not ready when the game is on, their share of the fad profits will be low.
If you think TLS should research new mobile tech to create another fad, then sure, that could work, however it would be better for them to research products/services that bring real productivity and not temporary spikes in profits. They need to think longer term. I don't think they are thinking long-term considering their sale of datacentres. Penn selling them to "unlock the true value of some of our assets" is usually code for funding board bonuses due to good numbers and leaving when the going gets tough, but since I'm not sufficiently familiar with TLS management to judge, I'll change my sentiment to None.
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