A recent white paper with the punchy title 5G Lessons Learned, 6G Key Requirements, 6G Network Evolution, and 6G Spectrum says that 5G was pretty pointless and failed to be the cure for cancer that everyone thought it would be.

When launched it was claimed to be the enabler of autonomous driving, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAM), extended reality (XR) and other digital miracles. While those applications were possible, they did not succeed due to a combination of "device form factor constraints, immaturity of device and service technology, low or absent market demand, and policy/regulation issues."

The report said that the performance of 5G networks was not the issue. The telco argued that some of the goals set out by the UN's international standardisation org ITU-R for 5G were met, but many tasks are still far from completion four years into the technology's commercial deployment.

Those goals were meant to be realized in the long term -- but that expectation was not accurately conveyed to consumers, leading to "excessive expectations."