What do operators want from 6G?
By Guy Daniels
Apr 7, 2025
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Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hello and welcome to our new series on defining 6G Networks. I'm Guy Daniels and this is the launch program for our second report in our series. What do Operators Want from 6G? And first of all, thank you so much for all the feedback to our report on what vendors want from 6G really encouraging support. And if you have not yet seen that first report, go ahead and download it. It's available on the telecom TV website. You just need to sign up and be part of our community full details below this video. So what do we have in this second report? Well, like the first, we have focused on the recent 6G workshop event that was held by the 3G PP in Korea. And just to remind you, there are well over 200 separate submissions, which we have divided into three categories.
(01:04):
One report per category, vendors, operators, and what we are calling community, i.e. everyone else. So how did the operator submissions compare with those from vendors? 30 network operators made written submissions to the workshop and these covered three distinct areas as per the workshop agenda overall, 6G vision views on the ran and views on the system architecture and core network. There were 64 papers submitted in total. These covers shown here are just a sample and we summarized each one and identified some of their major themes and issues and you can read these summaries in the report. We have a comprehensive directory section where you can quickly see what each company has contributed. We then created a far more detailed analysis of all these submissions, identifying common themes and areas where opinions differed just as we did for the first report on vendors. Now these submissions covered a lot of ground as you would expect, and we have highlighted some of the more interesting quotes here.
(02:21):
Simplification keeps coming up time and time again along with the need to reduce the number of specification options. Standalone mode is almost universally requested. There is at this time at least no appetite to repeat the non-ST standalone experience with 6G. There is though some disagreement about the extent of backwards compatibility with earlier generations. Although there is a lot of support to reject speed centric KPIs in favor of more balanced performance metrics. Spectral efficiency is requested more than new spectrum, perhaps a recognition of the reality. There's precious little appropriate new spectrum four 6G beyond FR three and certainly no one is singing the praises of millimeter wave or ertz extensions. And of course, 6G has to be very, very good. No point in being marginally better than 5G advanced. A reminder though, that this is just the start of the 6G standards process.
(03:34):
Absolutely nothing has been agreed yet, but this is a very important first step. All of these individual views have to somehow be collected into a common set of standards that are agreeable to the whole global industry. And as this report makes very clear, operators do not want a repeat of the 5G process. There are several versions of this diagram in the submissions. This one here comes from SK Telecom and it seeks to show the relationship and importance of cloud native ai, native and green native operations. Dosha telecom stresses the need to make a clean break from previous generations, at least those parts which really didn't work, and at the same time focus on a more simplified set of specifications. As with the vendor submissions, isac, integrated sensing and communication proved a popular use case to explore, and this particular schematic from SK Telecom helps to explain the necessary underlying architecture.
(04:52):
Of course, AI shows no sign of stopping, and so it features extremely heavily in the submissions. This diagram, for instance, from T-Mobile bills on current RAN ideas and also this one from AT&T, which shows how cloud native and AI interworks with network and service enablements. A couple of final illustrations concerning network evolution. This one from KDDI calls for a 5G core evolution approach and shows how current and new RAN will service user equipment. And a reminder from Telstra that 6G will be with us for more than 10 years, at least 25 years according to the Australian operator who provides a possible deployment scenario that takes us to a pure 6G environment. So many compelling ideas and concepts there. So please go ahead and download this latest report and let me know your thoughts. Do get in touch our next report. Our third one focused on the community will be published in about two weeks time, and this includes input from the satellite industry as well as enterprises, R&D facilities and telecoms organizations. For now though, enjoy this report and goodbye.
Hello and welcome to our new series on defining 6G Networks. I'm Guy Daniels and this is the launch program for our second report in our series. What do Operators Want from 6G? And first of all, thank you so much for all the feedback to our report on what vendors want from 6G really encouraging support. And if you have not yet seen that first report, go ahead and download it. It's available on the telecom TV website. You just need to sign up and be part of our community full details below this video. So what do we have in this second report? Well, like the first, we have focused on the recent 6G workshop event that was held by the 3G PP in Korea. And just to remind you, there are well over 200 separate submissions, which we have divided into three categories.
(01:04):
One report per category, vendors, operators, and what we are calling community, i.e. everyone else. So how did the operator submissions compare with those from vendors? 30 network operators made written submissions to the workshop and these covered three distinct areas as per the workshop agenda overall, 6G vision views on the ran and views on the system architecture and core network. There were 64 papers submitted in total. These covers shown here are just a sample and we summarized each one and identified some of their major themes and issues and you can read these summaries in the report. We have a comprehensive directory section where you can quickly see what each company has contributed. We then created a far more detailed analysis of all these submissions, identifying common themes and areas where opinions differed just as we did for the first report on vendors. Now these submissions covered a lot of ground as you would expect, and we have highlighted some of the more interesting quotes here.
(02:21):
Simplification keeps coming up time and time again along with the need to reduce the number of specification options. Standalone mode is almost universally requested. There is at this time at least no appetite to repeat the non-ST standalone experience with 6G. There is though some disagreement about the extent of backwards compatibility with earlier generations. Although there is a lot of support to reject speed centric KPIs in favor of more balanced performance metrics. Spectral efficiency is requested more than new spectrum, perhaps a recognition of the reality. There's precious little appropriate new spectrum four 6G beyond FR three and certainly no one is singing the praises of millimeter wave or ertz extensions. And of course, 6G has to be very, very good. No point in being marginally better than 5G advanced. A reminder though, that this is just the start of the 6G standards process.
(03:34):
Absolutely nothing has been agreed yet, but this is a very important first step. All of these individual views have to somehow be collected into a common set of standards that are agreeable to the whole global industry. And as this report makes very clear, operators do not want a repeat of the 5G process. There are several versions of this diagram in the submissions. This one here comes from SK Telecom and it seeks to show the relationship and importance of cloud native ai, native and green native operations. Dosha telecom stresses the need to make a clean break from previous generations, at least those parts which really didn't work, and at the same time focus on a more simplified set of specifications. As with the vendor submissions, isac, integrated sensing and communication proved a popular use case to explore, and this particular schematic from SK Telecom helps to explain the necessary underlying architecture.
(04:52):
Of course, AI shows no sign of stopping, and so it features extremely heavily in the submissions. This diagram, for instance, from T-Mobile bills on current RAN ideas and also this one from AT&T, which shows how cloud native and AI interworks with network and service enablements. A couple of final illustrations concerning network evolution. This one from KDDI calls for a 5G core evolution approach and shows how current and new RAN will service user equipment. And a reminder from Telstra that 6G will be with us for more than 10 years, at least 25 years according to the Australian operator who provides a possible deployment scenario that takes us to a pure 6G environment. So many compelling ideas and concepts there. So please go ahead and download this latest report and let me know your thoughts. Do get in touch our next report. Our third one focused on the community will be published in about two weeks time, and this includes input from the satellite industry as well as enterprises, R&D facilities and telecoms organizations. For now though, enjoy this report and goodbye.
Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.
Preview Show
TelecomTV’s Guy Daniels introduces the second report in our new series on “Defining 6G networks”, where we present comprehensive coverage and analysis of the 6G visions and requirements of the telecom industry’s major stakeholders. In this preview programme, we sample some of the highlights from this report, which focuses on what network operators want from 6G.
Download the report
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Published April 2025
In this second report we analysed a total of 64 submission documents from 30 network operators. These covered the 3GPP 6G Workshop sessions on the overall 6G vision, the radio access network, and system architecture and core network technology.
The following were identified as some of the key recommendations for industry standardisation:
- Adopt a 6G standalone (SA) architecture over non-standalone options from day one
- Prioritise sustainability and energy efficiency as design principles
- Ensure day one voice service support
- Streamline standardisation by minimising deployment options and feature overlaps
- Multi-RAT spectrum sharing (MRSS) is seen as an important migration path
- A preference is emerging to adopt a 5G core evolution approach rather than designing a new 6G core.
Discover the reasons behind these recommendations and what operators had to say about them, as well as many other important areas. The report highlights the top-10 recommendations of operators and their focus areas, and contains a complete directory containing summaries of all submission documents.
