EU, Japan Collaborate on 6G Future Connectivity

With 6G standards likely to start rolling out around 2025, now is the time for international collaboration on what the technology will look like and what its use cases will be, speakers said at a Tuesday Centre for European Policy Studies webinar on Japan-EU cooperation in 5G/6G and future connectivity. The EU and Japan signed a digital partnership in May and are discussing what they want to accomplish in technological terms in 2024, said Bernard Barani, European Commission DG Connect deputy head future connectivity systems unit. 6G is expected to arrive in the 2030s, said University of Tokyo professor Akihiro Nakao, who chairs Japan's International Committee of Beyond5G Promotion Consortium: In 2025, 3rd Generation Partnership Project standards will begin to embody what 6G will be in the real world. Asked how the two regions will put flesh on the bones of their partnership, Barani said the idea was to exchange views on future systems via structured dialogues, regular meetings at the ITU and as part of the EC's 2024 work program. Nakao said there's a need for industry and government funding and creating an EU-Japan flagship project to spur investment.The EU's 6G Hexa-X flagship program has already defined 23 use cases clustered into five families, Barani said: Robots and cobots; telepresence; massive twinning of the physical and digital worlds; local trust zones; and sustainable development. Japan set out seven directions for technologies it wants to achieve in the 2030s, said Nakao. It first wants to extend 5G capacities to ultra-fast and large capacities, ultra-low latency and ultra-numerous connections, and then add four value-added features for 6G: Ultra-low-power consumption; ultra-security and resilience; autonomy among devices without manual intervention, and scalability via seamless connections over satellites and High-Altitude Platform Stations. Asked whether spectrum for 6G will be an issue, Barani said it will be necessary to move to higher frequency bands for very accurate positioning and sensing. Those bands also provide a huge capacity, which will be needed for digital twinning. International coordination on how to use the high-frequency bands is important, Nakao said. Asked about the security of open radio access from high-risk vendors, he said ORAN is like taking the mobile network to pieces like Lego blocks. Pieces provided by one vendor can easily be replaced by those from another as long as the interfaces are clearly defined. Interoperability testing, however, is a challenge because the network has so many parts. Japan launched a testing center for interoperability security, he said.