(ChinaIT.com News) Experts from market research companies and network equipment vendors believe that 6G has three key aspects – automation, spectrum and standards.
The 6G system is expected to be commercially available in 2030, while the first phase of standardization may begin in 2025, and the first 6G specification will appear in 3GPP Release 21 in 2028.
The original vision was that terahertz communication, synaesthesia (JCAS), artificial intelligence and machine learning, reconfigurable smart surfaces (RIS), and photonic/visible light communication (VLC) would be among these technologies.
Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at market research firm LightCounting, said future 6G systems could enable many of the use cases that were originally promised in the 5G era.
“So far we haven’t seen any of the use cases that were proposed ten years ago. So basically, 6G will be all that we’ve been talking about but haven’t delivered,” Stéphane Téral said, adding that in the 6G era, more spectrum will be needed and the industry will have to think about how to adapt to it.
Sandeep Sharma, vice president of network equipment manufacturer Tech Mahindra, believes that regarding the future development of 6G technology, the entire industry needs to unanimously decide on expectations for 6G.
Regarding the spectrum demand in the future 6G era, Sandeep Sharma believes that centimeter wave spectrum will play a key role. According to other industry experts, cmWave spectrum is a very attractive frequency range for future mobile communication systems, as the 7-15 GHz band promises good coverage (especially at the lower edge) and considerable bandwidth.
Sandeep Sharma also said that as the industry moves towards future 6G systems, networks will become more cloud-based and virtualized – although MNOs will still need time to adapt to the situation. “As for the benefits of virtualization, it will take time for operators to adjust and adapt. But slowly, we’re seeing a ‘shift’ happening. I think as the industry moves further in 5G and eventually 6G, the network will bring more and more cloudification and openness.”
Both Stéphane Téral and Sandeep Sharma believe that future 6G systems need unified standards to achieve economies of scale and reduce costs for end users.
“If there is no unified standard, there will be no economies of scale. From a consumer point of view, they will pay more for the service, and the cost of the phone will be higher – because the phone manufacturers will have to adapt to different needs and requirements from all these multiple standards. In any case, this is the direction that the world should go,” said Stéphane Téral.
Sandeep Sharma said: “In order to achieve economies of scale and use spectrum correctly, I think 6G needs to have one global unified standard instead of several.”
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