ISAC: Who cares?

Language is fun. I suspect many people read the line above and saw it as dismissive of everyone's favorite would-be 6G applicaction. Nope. I actually want to explore the question of who cares about Integrated Sensing and Comms (ISAC)...or, rather, why. 

And, on the topic of "why" I have to aknowledge all the people who are already judging ISAC as dead on arrival. I get it, it's always useful to push back against hype; it helps you seem like a critical thinker. But if we want to be critical we should probably begin with a discussion of why people seem to care about it...

🎈 6G. So many of the 6G use cases being trotted out feel like something you could do with 5G, but ISAC is novel providing vendors with a "see, there's something new here" message and operators with some hope for the "luck of the even Gs."
🎈 Sovereignty. We've been discussing networks as critical infrastructure for years, but that discussion has gotten louder recently. If ISAC allows countries to tap into networks for their own positioning agendas, if fits into that convo.
🎈 Defense. See what I just said 🖕 
🎈 Network Monetization. We might call it 5G monetization, but what we really meant was "how do I make money from all the CapEx I just spent?" As a potential answer to the question in the near-term, medium-term, or long-term, you can see the interest. 
🎈 Physical AI. Robots are the literal embodiment of physical AI. The broader concept is, well...broader; it captures the application of artificial intelligence to real world "things." Of course, you need info on those things - like what where they are. 
🎈 IoT. See what I just said 🖕
🎈 NTN. It's likely that the most useful sensing applications will involve more than just one source of data. This is where you pull out your "I'm a cool tech person" term "sensor fusion" and where you get the relevace of NTN teamed up with terrestrial networks to sensing.

Does this put ISAC at the centre of a giant Venn diagram of industry dicussion topics? Well, probably not the centre, but somewhere in there. And that giant expanse of potential stakeholders explains why it shouldn't be dismissed too hastily. 

(points to anyone who can explain my choice of bullet emoji)