Key takeaways
- 6G is still very much in development: specifications, frequencies and standards are still being determined by organizations such as 3GPP and ITU.
- The more wireless a building becomes, the more important the wired backbone of fiber, capacity and active equipment becomes.
- Indoor mobile coverage may soon become just as decisive as WiFi coverage in buildings and requires room in the design.
- A digital-ready building is prepared for technology that does not yet fully exist during construction.
- The IT-Label makes it clear whether a building's digital infrastructure can grow along with future requirements.
5G is still very much in development worldwide, and yet laboratories and standards committees are already working hard on its successor: 6G. For anyone who develops, owns or leases real estate, that raises an uncomfortable question. If 6G eventually becomes faster, smarter and more integrated than 5G, is our real estate technically prepared for that?
That question is not a technical side issue. A building designed today will still be standing in ten or fifteen years. We do not yet know in detail what technology will need to run through it by then. Yet when designing the digital layer, we often only take today's requirements into account.
In this article, we do not use 6G as a prediction, but as a reason to raise a broader question: how future-proof is the digital infrastructure of real estate that we design today?
What 6G is expected to change
6G is not yet a product you can buy. Organizations such as 3GPP, ITU, the European Commission and research programs like Hexa-X are still discussing specifications, frequencies and standards. Many characteristics are still the subject of research. It is therefore wise to remain level-headed and not rely on firm promises.
What does become clear from the direction of the research is that 6G is expected to be about more than higher speeds alone. Expectations point to a broader combination of characteristics:
- extremely low latency;
- very high capacity;
- far more connected devices at the same time;
- smart sensor networks;
- AI-driven networks;
- indoor positioning and navigation;
- real-time digital applications;
- integration of communication, sensing and computing.
That last characteristic stands out. Where networks have so far mainly moved data, they are increasingly measuring and processing data at the same time. That changes what we ask of a building.
Translating this into real estate
What does this eventually mean for an office, a logistics building, a campus or a commercial space? Buildings already contain an increasing number of digital functions, and that number keeps growing. Think of sensors, smart access control, cameras, building management systems, autonomous devices and robots, AR and VR applications, indoor navigation, real-time monitoring, digital twins, smart logistics and AI applications.
When all these systems communicate simultaneously, the character of the building changes. It is then no longer a collection of spaces with an internet connection, but a digital platform. A building will soon not only be connected. It will communicate continuously.
That is exactly why the underlying infrastructure deserves more attention. Articles such as smart buildings and the foundation of IT infrastructure keep returning to this point: the visible smart functions depend on an invisible digital base.
A wireless building is a misconception. Behind every antenna lies fiber, behind every sensor lies capacity.
6G does not mean cabling disappears
A persistent misconception is that wireless technology makes fixed infrastructure redundant. The opposite is more likely. The more wireless a building becomes, the more important its wired backbone becomes.
Wireless infrastructure remains dependent on a fixed base. A 6G antenna or indoor radio ultimately has to be connected to a network. That chain consists, among other things, of:
- fiber optic backbones;
- switches and active network equipment;
- server and edge infrastructure;
- antennas and access points;
- sufficient power supply;
- data centers and outside connectivity;
- redundancy, so a single failure does not bring everything down.
The user sees wireless. The building sees fiber, capacity and infrastructure. Anyone who wants to know more about that fixed base will find the background in fiber optics in buildings and network redundancy.
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Request IT-labelIndoor coverage becomes more important
Higher frequencies can offer more capacity, but often pass less easily through walls and structures. As a result, indoor coverage may become an increasingly important part of building design, rather than something solved afterward.
That raises concrete design questions. Should new construction projects soon get standard provisions for indoor mobile infrastructure? Should technical shafts take fiber and antenna points into account? Will mobile coverage soon become just as important as WiFi? And who is responsible for that: the owner, the tenant or the telecom provider?
That last point is not a detail. In practice, mobile coverage often remains a measured blind spot, while 6G may require much finer-grained indoor infrastructure than earlier generations.
The digital-ready building
Buildings increasingly need to be prepared for technology that does not yet fully exist during construction. For this we use the term digital-ready building: a building that can grow digitally.
Such a building is characterized by:
- sufficient fiber capacity;
- room for future active equipment;
- expandable technical shafts;
- sufficient power and cooling;
- good indoor connectivity;
- options for redundancy;
- flexibility to grow along.
The core question behind this is simple and confronting: are we building today only for today's technology, or also for the digital requirements of 2035? Anyone who thinks about this early on keeps more options open with future-proof building.
6G, AI and edge computing
Future wireless networks are expected to increasingly use AI themselves, for network optimization, capacity allocation, traffic management, fault detection, energy management and dynamic coverage. At the same time, AI applications themselves process increasing amounts of real-time data. AI does not only consume data. AI will soon also determine how data moves through the building.
As a result, digital infrastructure becomes an increasingly heavy factor in the technical quality of real estate. This connects to the question central to AI and real estate: can the building handle the data flows of AI applications?
Edge computing in the building
Not all data needs to be continuously sent to a distant data center. More and more processing can take place locally, at the edge of the network. This may mean that buildings need more local computing in the future, in the form of mini data centers, edge servers, local AI processing and local storage, in technical rooms with cooling and redundancy.
Will tomorrow's server room then become a small edge data center environment? That is not a theoretical question. It touches on the cooling and security requirements discussed in the MER and SER as the heart of the building network.
Curious about your building's IT-label?
Discover how your property scores on digital infrastructure.
Request IT-labelNew questions for real estate professionals
All of this means that the standard questions asked about a building deserve expansion. Alongside "how many square meters are available?" come digital questions that were rarely asked until recently:
- How much digital capacity is available?
- How good is the mobile indoor coverage?
- Is there room for future antenna infrastructure?
- How much fiber capacity is present in the building?
- Can the backbone grow along?
- Is edge computing possible?
- How many devices can communicate simultaneously?
This is exactly what the IT-Label is meant for. It makes a building's digital quality clear, so these questions do not only surface after completion. An IT-Label looks at, among other things, fiber, backbone, capacity, redundancy, cabling, WiFi, mobile coverage, server rooms, edge infrastructure, active network equipment, expandability, physical security, documentation and future data consumption.
The result is expressed in a classification from PREMIUM to SHELL, using concepts such as digital delivery level, digital growth capacity and digital-ready building. For existing buildings, a Digital Due Diligence can function as a digital MOT test, so you know what you are digitally buying or renting.
The comparison with electrical infrastructure
In new construction, we also do not size electrical infrastructure exactly to today's consumption. We take expansion into account: charging points, heat pumps, solar panels and future power demand. No one considers that excessive.
So why would we size digital infrastructure exactly to today's data usage? Digital lifespan is usually shorter than structural lifespan, which is exactly why it is so important to build in room for growth.
A concrete next step
6G may still be years away. The technical standards are still being developed and commercial rollout will likely only become relevant in the next decade. But the building in which 6G will eventually have to function is already being designed today. The question is not whether 6G will be available in the office tomorrow. The question is whether today's building can carry tomorrow's technology.
We do not need to know exactly what 6G will look like to already make room for digital growth today. Anyone who develops, owns, rents, advises or supplies IT can factor digital infrastructure into the design, leasing and purchasing process earlier. Start with insight: have an IT-Label pre-inspection determine what a building is already digitally capable of today and where it can grow. More background can be found at what is the IT-Label and at www.it-label.com.
Together, we make visible what is still invisible today.
