6G: Are we ambitious enough?
- With the first commercial 6G solutions expected in 2030, we are starting standardization and preparations for future 6G products.
- Discover Ericsson’s leading role in defining 6G with examples from Mobile World Congress 2025, where we showcased some of the latest 6G advancements such as Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC), evolution of the 6G testbed and photonic-integrated radios.
6G Portfolio Strategy, Business Area Networks
Strategic Research Communication Director
6G Portfolio Strategy, Business Area Networks
Strategic Research Communication Director
6G Portfolio Strategy, Business Area Networks
Strategic Research Communication Director
It is a year since our blog post 6G straight from the Ericsson labs: Is it too early? and now, with MWC 2025 done and dusted, it is time to take a new look at 6G and contemplate what progress has been made.
The conversation has moved on from “Will we have a 6G?” to a broader and more future-looking discussion in line with the start of the 6G standardization work in 3GPP. Some key questions for 2025 were:
- How will 6G be used?
- What new and exciting concepts will 6G bring?
- How far have we come with 6G prototyping?
- How can we introduce 6G to the networks?
- Are we ambitious enough?
All valid questions indeed! Let’s explore the topics one by one.
How will 6G be used?
6G is several years away – the first solutions are not expected until 2030. But, of course, we are already thinking about how it would be used and what types of use cases would be needed and wanted by consumers, industry, and society.
In an earlier blog post, our Ericsson Research colleagues described seven 6G use cases that we can expect will be desired and demanded in the 2030-2035 time frame, and that will require 6G. These use cases span some of the main consumer, society, device, and technology trends that we see emerging now and expect to develop further in the 2030s.
Seven 6G use cases
At MWC 2025, we showed an interactive demo that effectively visualized these use cases, generating engaging conversations with our audience about the most promising and impactful use cases to consider when we design 6G.
Let’s have a closer look at two of these use cases.
Massive mixed reality use case
From today’s use of smartphones to a 6G enabled future with mass market immersive shared experiences mixing digital content and physical background, using various kinds of user devices.
For this use case, the network needs to deliver capacity for high device density, high uplink and downlink data rates, and wide area service coverage without gaps. Latency needs to be stable, and quality of service needs to be adapted to different data streams.
Spatial mapping between digital content and the physical environment will require spatial data, which can be derived by network sensing. The network can also offload compute and AI models from the devices, further driving the demand for uplink capacity.
Autonomous mobility use case
From today’s autonomous mobility in controlled and constrained areas, for example, ports to a 6G enabled future with autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots on city streets and all around us.
This use case puts very high demands on the network, requiring high levels of resiliency, reliability, and predictable time-critical communication. It demands 3D connectivity on the ground and in the airspace. Machines will communicate with each other, with compute and AI offloaded from the user device to the network. Central coordination and control will be based on digital twins using spatial data that can be provided by the network.
As the above use case descriptions indicate, 6G can bring new and evolved capabilities to serve the needs and opportunities of our customers and society as a whole. By 2030, devices and applications are expected to demand significantly more uplink capacity, along with advanced network services such as AI-as-a-Service (for example, model training and storage), compute offloading, sensing, and more accurate positioning. These capabilities will need to scale for mass market adoption over wider areas.
What new and exciting concepts will 6G bring?
As with any ‘G’, the 6G RAN will be a mix of evolved and entirely new concepts.
Examples of evolved concepts for 6G include spectrum aggregation, spectrum sharing, and energy performance.
Spectrum aggregation will be improved to enable much faster access to data, greatly improving the performance of real-traffic characteristics in particular.
Multi-RAT spectrum sharing (MRSS) will address both TDD and FDD – previously, it was only supported for FDD. In addition, 5G+6G MRSS will have up to 10x lower overhead compared to 4G+5G spectrum sharing.
Energy performance will be enhanced on both the device and the network side, contributing to sustainability as well as network efficiency.
6G is also expected to be AI native from Day 1.
Check out these papers to learn more:
- Energy performance of 6G Radio Access Networks: A once in a decade opportunity
- 6G RAN – key building blocks for new 6G radio access networks
- Defining AI native: A key enabler for advanced intelligent telecom networks
For new 6G concepts, there are many topics under investigation, including support for a scalable 6G RAT. The ambition is to accommodate all types of devices as an integrated part of the 6G RAT, from the lower capability IoT-type devices to the high-end advanced consumer and industrial devices.
Spatially aware networks and ISAC are also new areas generating a lot of interest and showing enormous potential. Support for new spectrum, extreme MIMO, and massive arrays are other topics of exploration for 6G.
For this blog post, we have picked just two examples of new concepts showcased at MWC – Spatially aware networks with ISAC and Photonic-integrated radios.
New concept: Spatial awareness with ISAC
Spatially aware networks are communication systems that have integrated sensing capabilities allowing them to gather spatial data in real-time. The base stations of the network use ISAC technology to sense their surroundings using the same hardware and spectrum as used for communication.
Potential ISAC use cases include:
- Detecting physical objects and mapping the physical environment.
- Proactively detecting changing propagation conditions, for network operation actions.
Potential ISAC use cases
The network then collects and aggregates spatial data from all the base stations across a specified area and exposes the data through network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to a wide range of end-users. The ISAC-generated spatial data may be fused with spatial data generated from positioning methods (limited to connected devices), spatial data generated by sensors in the user devices (for example, lidars and cameras), and from other sensors deployed in the infrastructure.
The network itself can use spatial data to improve the performance of the communication services. The main intention, however, is to make this real-time data available to users outside the network itself – traffic control, airspace administration, real-estate security, and so on. As the data becomes readily available, app developers and other entrepreneurs are expected to exploit it in many new ways.
Any frequency that is used for communication can also be used for sensing. Different frequencies have different properties. Low frequencies have good coverage and a large, existing deployment. High frequencies lend themselves to large antenna arrays and good angular resolution and offer wider bandwidths and good spatial resolution. The joint use of both low and high frequencies has the potential to combine the advantages of both spectra.
What precision can be obtained? The positional precision depends on many parameters: The size of the object, the transmit power, the available bandwidth, the number of obstacles between the sensor and the target, the number of sensors overlooking the target, etcetera. In experiments, under good conditions, we have seen that a pedestrian can be positioned with an accuracy of approximately 1m.
New concept: Photonic integrated radio
As we look ahead towards commercial deployment of 6G around 2030, we are also looking at new technologies for more efficient implementation of radio products. One example is a new way to build a radio antenna system. Ericsson has developed a prototype together with university partners Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and CNIT – National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications – in Pisa, Italy, which we brought to MWC.
This solution integrates photonics and electronics on the same platform and leverages the fact that photonics is immune to electromagnetic interference and the optical signals can travel with no significant loss of power and integrity. In this example, we demonstrated how photonics can be used to generate and distribute radio frequencies in the antenna system using silicon photonics and graphene technologies.
Here, we focus on two main components of the concept: A photonic frequency synthesizer and a graphene optoelectronic mixer.
Photonic frequency synthesizer
The prototyped photonic frequency synthesizer generates light waves at different harmonic frequencies that are distributed through optical waveguides to optoelectronic mixers that are located close to the emitting elements of the MIMO antenna system. The difference between every two optical harmonics (immune to electromagnetic interference) makes up a radio frequency.
In the graphene optoelectronic mixers, the optical signals are converted to RF and mixed with the electrical information signals, just before being amplified and transmitted by the antenna emitting elements.
Photo by Antonio d’Errico.
One big advantage is that the same hardware can be used for different frequencies with high performance, in current 3GPP spectrum and even up to the sub-THz level. Another one is low energy consumption.
This is a great example of cross-competence innovation, where RF antenna expertise meets photonics expertise. The work has resulted in several publications, including an article in Nature Communications.
How far have we come with 6G prototyping - The 6G testbed
This year, our MWC 2025 demo highlighted advancements in 6G RAN evolution and the collaborative efforts between Ericsson and Keysight in fostering a robust 6G ecosystem.
The 6G testbed demo at MWC2025
Read more about the Keysight collaboration.
The live demonstration featured a cmWave communication link between an Ericsson base station and a Keysight test user equipment (UE). By introducing an attenuator in the communication link, we showcased dynamic link adaptation. The base station intelligently adjusted the modulation and coding scheme— as we actively varied it — and responded with corresponding throughput adjustments over both the uplink and downlink. This not only demonstrated the radio’s real-time responsiveness but also illustrated the architectural strides being made in 6G RAN design.
The 2025 demo was a significant advancement compared to MWC 2024, where we showcased an early prototype cmWave radio with a digital front-end connected via cable to a baseband compute unit. That demo focused on lower-layer functional splits, compute partitioning, and adjacent channel suppression with real-time throughput visualizations.
Together with our partners, we’re excited to continue this momentum — look out for the next evolution of our 6G testbed at MWC 2026!
How can we introduce 6G to the networks?
It sounds like it might be a bit early to talk about adding 6G to the network but, in fact, there is a lot of preparation to be done to make a migration towards 6G both smooth and efficient. The preparation involves the whole ecosystem. We are working on three of the key steps right now:
A 6G standalone architecture
At MWC, we showed how to achieve a smooth migration of the core network by connecting 6G RAN to a core which is an evolution of the 5G core.
Smooth 5G to 6G migration
This approach allows the investments in 5G standalone to be leveraged. Industry efforts can be focused on improving the system where needed and adding new features for 6G, instead of spending resources on a complete core re-design which, so far, has shown no real benefits. 5G Advanced services, APIs, and end-to-end slicing can be reused and expanded on for 6G.
A lesson learned from 5G is that we should avoid several architecture options and focus the industry on developing one option very well. We propose to go for 6G standalone only and avoid a non-standalone (NSA) mode. The 5G NSA mode facilitated a quick introduction of 5G RAN and was intended to be a temporary transition step to fully capable 5G SA. However, the transition to 5G SA has turned out to be very slow in most markets and the majority of networks still do not leverage many of the full 5G benefits.
Extending the network platform
Already with 5G, the adoption of Network APIs can help application developers easily access and make use of network capabilities and enable new revenues for CSPs. The first focus is on APIs related to communication services, such as quality on demand (QoD) for varying application needs, but also on services for fraud detection and more. With 6G we can take this to another level and provide “beyond-connectivity” services and information, such as spatial data generated from ISAC, but also AI and compute services. To learn more about the 6G platform, read this Ericsson Technology Review article.
The image below shows how 6G will extend the network platform.
5G+6G spectrum sharing
In addition to new spectrum, 6G will also operate in the existing 3GPP bands. A smooth migration to 6G will depend largely on efficient spectrum sharing with 5G. In the past, spectrum sharing between 5G and 4G came with a relatively large overhead, mainly because the 4G radio interface was designed with a lot of always-on signaling. With 6G, the aim is to make spectrum sharing with 5G smarter and more efficient.
Multi-RAT spectrum sharing
Extremely low overhead 5G-6G MRSS was demonstrated at MWC 2025 using our radio testbed integrated with a digital twin map of Kista, Sweden (Ericsson HQ). By taking advantage of the lean design of 5G and the even leaner design that we propose for 6G, we showed less than 3% overhead for MRSS in the TDD spectrum as well as the capability to dynamically adapt to channel conditions and load.
6G: are we ambitious enough?
Views from a future 6G ecosystem
In the Ericsson booth, we had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion on “6G: Are we ambitious enough”. Panelists from across the industry were vendors Ericsson and Nokia, CSPs T-Mobile US and NTT Docomo, application/device providers Meta and Accedo, and from academia, the University of Bristol. The ecosystem was well represented and surprisingly well-aligned on some key topics including:
- The importance of discussing and aligning on what we want 6G to be for the broad ecosystem – the earlier, the better.
- The need to focus on addressing real, quantifiable benefits when defining 6G. Introduction of new capabilities should be driven by their value.
- The importance of leveraging on the best of 5G for early monetization of 6G, continuity from 5G, and optimization of investments into 5G.
- The smooth introduction of 6G with excellent performance from Day 1, reusing existing assets as much as possible.
Regarding the question – if the industry is ambitious enough on 6G – the discussion concluded that 6G should not stop with its first standards release and initial deployments. It is important that academic research continues to explore and drive technology advancements for further evolution of 6G standard releases and implementations while also considering how such add-ons and improvements can fit into the 6G architecture and concept fundamentals that will be set very soon. To listen to the full discussion, see the video here:
And finally…
Thanks to all of the hard-working people both in Barcelona and “behind the scenes” in our labs and offices.
Our 6G demo team at MWC2025. Photo by Johan Lundsjö.
Many, many hours of innovation, dedication, and teamwork have gone into bringing the demos and concepts at MWC 2025 to life. These displays introduce new technologies that are driving 6G and the networks of the future – making the future of connectivity real for our global audience.
And one last evolved concept to mention – the Ericsson coffee. Over 16,900 coffees were enjoyed at the Ericsson booth during the four days of MWC 2025, edging past last year’s 16,500.
Was it our brand new ‘coffee logo’ that sparked the surge? Some things we can only speculate.