The vendor has been selected to lead major 6G initiatives in the US around spectrum, AI-native air interface, network as a sensor technology, extreme connectivity, security and cognitive and specialised architectures.
Earlier this year, Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s CEO said he expected 6G to be in operation by the end of the decade.
As the world hasn’t yet fully realised the potential of 5G, the exact definition and scope of what 6G can bring is so far unclear.
According to Nokia, future 6G networks will use a “very different” blueprint from today’s networks. The new 6G architecture will emphasise sustainability, openness, digital inclusion, privacy and trust alongside today’s key metrics of speed, capacity and latency.
6G, it says, will be far more than a wide-area networking solution and will reproduce the latency and reliability of dedicated cables to enable a new class of subnetworks that will contain “invisible wires” that will connect the most life-critical services in specialised subnetworks.
Nokia adds that it is a “driving force” in the standards bodies for defining 5G system architectures, and it continues to ride that momentum into 6G architecture planning.
In January last year, the firm announced it was the project leader for Hexa-X, the European Commissions’ 6G flagship initiative for research into next generation networks, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
And earlier this year, Nokia confirmed plans to collaborate with South Korean operator LG Uplus to explore how existing infrastructure can be used for 6G projects.
