You've seen the progression on your phone screen over the years: 3G technology was followed by 4G, and now, probably more often than not, your phone is connecting over 5G. On the ever-closer horizon is, you guessed it, 6G.

Unlike with the Gs that preceded it, 6G has been flying under the radar. It's less a source of consumer hype and more a point of discussion around the telecoms industry and the networks it relies upon.

But that isn't quite the full story. 

During his keynote address at Web Summit on Tuesday, Cristiano Amon, CEO of chipmaker Qualcomm, hinted that 6G networks, which are scheduled to launch in the US in the early 2030s, might have something exciting to offer us after all.

"6G is designed for AI," he said at the event in Lisbon, Portugal. It will boost the speed of connectivity and sense what's around us, providing context to the AI agents that are coming to do things on our behalf.

Following this tantalizingly brief comment, I was keen to find out more about what 6G cellular technology might do for the average smartphone user, so I asked Amon to elaborate on what we can expect from this next-gen network technology.

Every generation of network tech has been the gateway to a new experience, Amon said. 2G was about making sure everyone in the world can have a mobile phone, 3G was for connecting the phone to the internet, 4G turned our mobile device into computers. 5G has allowed us to have critical connectivity and unlimited data.

What then, can 6G offer us above and beyond what we already have?

The obvious answer: even faster speeds and even lower latency. But that takes on particular importance given the coming shift in how we'll interact with our AI-enabled devices, Amon said. 

One of the big benefits of the more advanced large language models we're now using -- the foundational technology that underlies AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot -- is that they can understand our natural speech, making voice the easiest and most obvious way for us to chat with our AI agents.

"Voice is going to become important again," Amon told me. "We're going to use voice to connect to agents and to all the different devices, so it's going to even further improve the response time, and it's going to provide you faster connectivity."

6G will drive an 'always-sensing network'

Qualcomm has been an early proponent of the potential of AI agents, which can independently carry out tasks on your behalf. Its chips are already beginning to power agentic experiences across phones, wearables, computers and cars. 

If we're relying on our voices to interact accurately and confidently with agents, which might be making payments or emailing a client on our behalf, absolutely seamless connectivity will be critical to ensure nothing gets lost in translation. This is where 6G will come into its own, according to Amon.

"The devices we interact with are going to understand what we say, what we hear, what we see," he said. "6G will provide context." We'll be surrounded by an "always-sensing network" that will allow our agents to predict what we'll do and need next based on what's going on around us, he added.

On stage, Amon gave the example of applying AI to a radio -- 6G, like its predecessors, is a radio communication technology -- so that it can detect disturbances in the radio frequency environment in a room. It could, for instance, detect changes to a baby's breathing while it's in the crib without requiring a wearable monitor. Another, perhaps less appealing example, is mass facial recognition, which would allow for the simultaneous identification of everyone in a room.

"I know it sounds a little bit scary," said Amon. But the 6G network understanding our context will be key to enabling AI agents to operate, he added.

With at least five years until 6G is due to launch in the US and with AI continuing to develop at a rapid pace, it's hard to predict exactly what will happen when the two technologies finally collide. But one thing is for sure: 6G will power new experiences -- some of which might not have been invented yet.

Disclosure: Katie Collins traveled to Lisbon as a guest of Web Summit to serve as a panel moderator. Her reporting from the event was independent of that role.