As the telecoms industry embarks on its journey toward 6G, 2025 is proving to be a pivotal year. InterDigital is a proud sponsor of TelecomTV’s four-part “Defining 6G Networks” series, which synthesized more than 220 submissions to the 3GPP 6G workshop in Incheon, Korea, earlier this year to capture collective sentiment from vendors, operators, and the broader wireless ecosystem about their needs and expectations for 6G. The final report, titled “ The Next Steps Towards 6G,” offers additional insights into the technology priorities, standardization roadmap, and collaborative efforts driving the development of 6G.
InterDigital stands alongside industry partners in actively shaping 6G with clarity, collaboration, and vision. Our outlook on 6G is grounded in a purposeful approach – designing future networks that are simpler, smarter, and more sustainable from day one.
As part of a roundtable discussion hosted by TelecomTV and featuring the expertise of InterDigital’s Diana Pani, Intel’s Puneet Jain, Vodafone’s Luke Ibbetson, and analyst Dean Bubley, the panelists reflected on the practical implications for the 6G design and standardization process. Amidst the diverse 6G workshop submissions and the distinct panelist perspectives, one takeaway was clear: 6G must learn from 5G’s deployment challenges and streamline design choices to deliver meaningful improvements in efficiency, resilience, and user experience.
With insights from a variety of workshop contributions, several themes emerged:
- Simplicity by Design: Industry stakeholders call for a more streamlined architectural foundation for 6G. Diana Pani, who also serves as RAN 2 Chair, noted that 5G “introduced a lot of optionality, which made implementation complex.” For 6G, we believe success lies within pragmatic design choices that are well informed by implementation-driven frameworks and practical deployment needs from day one.
- Energy Efficiency: Across all stakeholders, energy efficiency was listed as a critical design principle. From the radio access network to the end user devices, there is a broad consensus that designing towards sustainability by improving the energetic footprint of 6G systems must be foundational and pervasive.
- AI-Native Architecture: While industry has not yet formally settled on a definition around the exact meaning of “Native-AI”, consensus is clearly emerging that 6G should facilitate the deployment of proprietary AI algorithms as part of the baseline system design to enable distributed intelligence, new AI-driven services, and new monetization opportunities for operators. InterDigital advocates for the standardization of enablers that support AI/ML-based solutions, as well as for data management frameworks that will together enable network automation, optimization of specific functions, and new services.
- Beyond Communication Capabilities: Across contributors, there is general consensus that next-generation 6G networks must enable new network-based capabilities that go beyond the bit-pipe approach of current communication systems, including capabilities related to generating timely and accurate spatial information. For example, integrated sensing and communication, or ISAC, is one of the key features that can integrate well with digital twinning use cases, immersive applications, and even stimulate more novel 3rd party applications. This feature is being actively explored in pre-standards bodies like ETSI and will likely be a topic for upcoming 6G work items in 3GPP standards discussions.
- NTN Integration for Ubiquitous Connectivity: Seamless coordination between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks (NTN) will be integral in achieving worldwide ubiquitous connectivity, so there is substantial stakeholder support for NTN connectivity within the foundation of 6G.
The roundtable discussion also highlighted a new focus on the importance of consistent quality of experience and operational efficiency over increasing bandwidth and data rates, as was seen in previous generations. Instead, stakeholders are broadly aligning around design targets towards streamlining deployments, reduced complexity, enhanced energy performance, and features that enable “beyond communication” capabilities like ISAC and new business models as key drivers for 6G.
With 3GPP’s Release 20 kicking off 6G technical studies in June, these next few years will be very important. The early study phases will shape the key design aspects of the 6G system through a set of recommendations ahead of the normative phase that will continue the technical work towards the first set of specifications that will enable commercial 6G deployments, expected to start around 2030. As Diana emphasized during the panel, now is the moment to influence 6G’s direction, both technically and fundamentally. “Implementable design targets and the courage to make firm, mandatory decisions” will be key to ensuring that 6G avoids the challenges of its predecessors and unlocks its full potential.
We encourage you to explore TelecomTV’s “Defining 6G Network” four-report series here and watch the roundtable discussion here.