Nokia is supporting a new open RAN interface, hoping to use this to make itself more competitive in the 5G competition against Ericsson and Samsung.
Ericsson's former CEO Bö rje Ekholm officially stepped down this week, and his tenure will forever be associated with the Swedish company's recovery in subsequent 5G deployments. However, his successor Per Narvinger may not necessarily be grateful for his description of 6G as an "evolution" rather than a revolution of this technology at the beginning of 2025.
Until 5G, each generation of mobile communications was considered revolutionary, and it had to be significantly different from the previous one, just like the Millennial and Baby Boomer generations, in order to justify the necessary investment. 2G brought mass voice and text messaging, 3G introduced basic internet services, 4G brought new waveforms and high-definition video, and so on. To describe 6G as merely a network improvement, similar to a larger smartphone screen or more durable battery, could greatly diminish the motivation for upgrading, and might even lead to the end of this well-known yet controversial cycle of upgrades.
Of course, Ekholm is aware of customers' dissatisfaction with 5G. Before its launch, 5G was marketed as a technology essential for remote surgeries and autonomous vehicles. American politicians even claimed that when applied to various objects, it would become so critical that Chinese manufacturers could not be allowed to gain a foothold in this field, either economically or socially. In the end, 5G turned out to be nothing more than an improved version of 4G, providing only new spectrum and additional capacity for the already congested mobile networks. The operators that spent billions of dollars deploying 5G are not satisfied with the returns they have received.
Therefore, the statement from this Ericsson executive can be seen as a response to customers who are unwilling to make another round of significant investments. A few years ago, when 6G was still just an "unfertilized egg," the academic community envisioned networks that could transmit smells, tastes, and touch, as well as vision and hearing. There were still people in the industry passionately discussing the necessity of 6G for connecting robots and AI. However, these applications increasingly resemble those of the 5G era: bizarre use cases that are difficult to implement on a large scale. Bolder visions are fading away. Many telecom operators, who express their demands through the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance ( NGMN ), are now requesting modified technologies based on the same underlying infrastructure.
Therefore, at the recent plenary meeting held in Madrid by 3GPP, the umbrella organization for global standards, the main topic of discussion was how to introduce 6G into the networks of operators who have lost interest in generational upgrades, addressing some rather practical issues. Various solutions are still being discussed among the parties involved, but it seems that stakeholders have reached an agreement on a "baseline" for 6G deployment, which has already led to some frictions.
This baseline will adopt a system called multi-RAT spectrum sharing (MRSS), where RAT refers to wireless access technology. In simple terms, it will allow for the deployment of 6G within the 5G frequency band and dynamic allocation of frequency resources between the two generations of technology. Omdia chief analyst, from Light Reading, a sister company of Gabriel Brown, stated: "Because it is dynamic, you can reuse the 5G spectrum for either 6G or 5G, depending on how many devices are present."
One major concern for telecom operators is that MRSS will ultimately end up like the previous dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), which was a scheme for allocating resources between 4G and 5G but faced severe criticism due to perceived flaws. Brown explains, "The problem with DSS is that when the initial version placed 5G in the 4G frequency band, it significantly increased signaling overhead and consumed more resource blocks, resulting in less available capacity. The efficiency was very low."
In this regard, the test results shared by Madrid for MRSS seem encouraging. Calculated as a percentage, the additional signaling overhead exhibited by several manufacturers is in the single digits – which, in the view of Brown, is already sufficient for MRSS to function effectively, and is far lower than the early performance of DSS.
However, one unresolved concern is whether operators will be able to introduce 6G by upgrading the software of existing devices. For some large Western telecommunications companies, avoiding hardware replacement seems to be of paramount importance. Vodafone The head of research and development, Luke Ibbetson, stated in a recent interview: "If you look at the fundamental reason for doing this, it is to avoid replacing the wireless infrastructure."
A 6G standard that can be upgraded through software may not be beneficial for network manufacturers, who are still primarily seen as device suppliers. Even though this could represent a more profitable business for companies like Ericsson and Nokia, it could also lead to significant revenue gaps. This seems to conflict with Nokia's current strategy: the company is shifting from using custom chips from Marvell Technology in its wireless access network RAN product portfolio to NVIDIA graphics processors GPU.
The message from Nokia is that the existing GPU will be able to support 6G software for many years to come, unlike today's dedicated integrated circuits (ASIC). However, in none of the commercially deployed 5G networks to date, is there any use of GPU in RAN calculations. For Nokia's customers, this means that initial investments in 6G hardware seem inevitable before the arrival of 6G.
It is still unclear how many of the 5G devices already deployed by Ericsson are capable of supporting 6G. Marie Hogan, the person in charge of Ericsson's 6G product portfolio strategy, stated in an interview with Light Reading at the company's headquarters in Stockholm this summer: "I hope that soon we will be able to clarify which hardware that has been deployed on-site before the arrival of 6G can support 6G, so that 6G can be introduced on certain hardware through software upgrades."
Brown believes that another possibility is that only the newer generation of 5G devices will ultimately be compatible with 6G. He said, "We're not really sure where that dividing line will fall." This analyst stated that manufacturers cannot provide guarantees to customers until they know exactly what the specifications will include.
The person in charge of R&D at Vodafone also acknowledged this challenge. He said, "We have multiple generations of hardware from various manufacturers, some of which are older than others. A radio device that was six years old and which we might want to upgrade in three years might not be worth upgrading to 6G because it may not be compatible with the software. It also doesn't have enough computing power to run it. This is basically understandable."
Another concern related to this is that the benefits that 6G software upgrades may bring are not substantial. As an evolution of 5G, 6G is likely to reuse a large amount of the same underlying technologies, including the key OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) waveform. Even if it is more efficient than 5G, it is unlikely to bring about significant changes, especially when taking into account the MRSS signaling overhead.
Brown said, "Will there be some very obvious new features? I don't think there will be that many. There will indeed be some improvements, but as a mobile phone user, will you really notice them? Probably not."
However, if one evaluates MRSS from only this perspective, the key points are overlooked. He added that MRSS is necessary because when operators eventually deploy 6G radios in new frequency bands, they also have to combine these new bands with the old ones for coverage and signaling purposes. “MRSS allows you to join the new frequency bands first, and then gradually reuse some of your other spectra at the same time,” Brown said, “MRSS helps you introduce 6G, and that’s why it serves as a migration path.”
The problem is that many of the new frequency bands designated for 6G deployment are not very effective. Some users who have tried the 3.5GHz mid-band frequency band allocated for 5G describe it as “very good indoors, but very poor outdoors.” Low-frequency bands have a wider coverage range and stronger penetration through walls, but these bands are already heavily occupied. This has forced the industry to turn its attention to 6GHz and even higher frequency bands for 6G.
On the positive side, these higher frequency bands have more spectrum, which can support faster connections. Within Ericsson and Nokia, there are also optimistic views that the 6GHz spectrum can be mapped onto the 5G mid-band grid, thus allowing operators to avoid the need to build new sites. To achieve this, manufacturers are researching more advanced large-scale MIMO technologies, which involve adding more antenna units to each wireless unit. The related technology of beamforming will direct the signal to the user's device.
But not everyone is convinced. Large-scale MIMO units can also be very expensive, and this technology has recently faced some high-profile criticism. Nokia's former Chief Technology Officer Marcus Weldon told Light Reading: "Large-scale MIMO has somewhat faded from the spotlight because the cost of radio equipment and the complexity of managing beamforming have not proven to be significantly better in reality."
In Ericsson's latest 'Mobile Report' released in June, the 5G mid-band coverage rate among the European population is only 60%, more than seven years since the first 5G network was launched in that region. Given the currently sluggish atmosphere, it would not be surprising if the 6GHz coverage rate is lower than this level when 6G reaches a similar stage of development.
Brown said, "Will 6G be as fast as 5G? We don't know. For now, we can't think of any applications that 5G cannot meet." In a market where technology evolves rapidly, there are clearly many changes that could occur over the next decade. For companies like Ericsson, Nokia, and other key players in the mobile technology field, a world filled with robots that require 6G might bring all the necessary conditions together.
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