In this sponsored episode of The Five Nine, Fierce Networks contributor Daniel Frankel sits down with Hemanth Sampath, VP of Engineering at Qualcomm, to explore how 6G will unlock new user-experiences and operator services.
Sampath outlines a shift from app-based smartphone content consumption to AI-agent driven, natural interactions – extending to AR glasses & wearables. This evolution will drive a surge in overall traffic, especially uplink, that 6G is designed to support. He also explains how AI-native protocols, collaborative communications and distributed compute will improve user experiences.
For operators, the rise of edge AI and network digital twins presents opportunities to reduce operational costs and generate new new revenue streams through sensing and inferencing services.
Finally, Sampath shares how Qualcomm is leading the way with XR cellular trials, on-device AI innovations, and cutting-edge 6G research. Tune in to discover how AI and 6G will reshape connectivity in the decade ahead.
Daniel Frankel:
Hello, I'm Daniel Frankel, a regular contributor to Fierce Networks, and co-founder and CEO of NextTMT. I have a new but somewhat anticipated topic to broach today. With us to help us do that is Hemanth Sampath, Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm. We've talked a lot over the last decade about 5G and its various use cases, but now on the horizon is a ton of emerging new use cases come about. I think of OpenAI's partnership with Gemini a few months ago, and a brand new type of device. We're seeing the emergence of new devices that need vastly more network wherewithal. 6G, as it might be.
And Hemanth, I know you have a lot of thoughts on that. Maybe you can say hello and tell us about some of the emerging consumer trends that you're seeing, device-wise.
Hemanth Sampath:
Hi Daniel, great to be chatting with you here today. And indeed, the new AI-based user interface is definitely changing consumer behaviors. Today we primarily have a smartphone-centric, screen-centric usage with keyboards. It's all app-based and user-initiated content consumption. That's quickly transforming to a more AI agentic-based interaction, with a much more natural interaction, where you could have a persistent AI agent that is continuously observing, sensing and inferring. And then when you pair that with a Glass and a Watch, you have a much more natural user interface.
The Glass sees what you see, and then you could speak to your phone or your Glass. And so that is essentially going to transform the traffic that is generated from currently, which is a more downlink-centric user-initiated traffic, to a much more persistent and sometimes even more uplink traffic, because the glasses see what you see, and if you have a persistent AI agent that is continuously generating traffic to the network. So indeed, the consumer behaviors are changing that way.
Daniel Frankel:
Yeah, there are user behaviors and experiences that you have to structure imagination a little bit, just think of them. But you've had some time to just go through that process before. Maybe you could talk about what user experiences we can expect to become mainstream over the next five to 10 years.
Hemanth Sampath:
Yeah, certainly. I think we're going to go from a smartphone-centric, keyboard-centric, to a much more paired with an AR or an AI glass and a watch, and then maybe a puck. And so what that's going to do is, it's going to enable this immersive and a multimodal AI-based communications. So you're going to, instead of just carrying one device like a phone, you'll now have multiple devices that you'll be carrying and you'll be able to seamlessly work across these different devices by speaking to them, or the glasses see what you see. And also the other thing that is happening is, because your on-device AI is improving, it really allows for a much more context-aware communications, meaning the device knows your user context, it knows your application, so it's able to communicate that to the network and have it adapt to your needs. So it'll be a much more responsive and a much more context-aware network that'll come about.
Daniel Frankel:
Obviously we can't do it today. There's a lot of technology challenges that have to be enabled. What are those, and how will 5G solve them? Can we say that at this point?
Hemanth Sampath:
Yeah, so today you're already seeing some of these use cases emerge over 5G and essentially for this technology to completely scale, 6G is on the horizon. And then because these use cases are going to generate a whole lot more traffic, 6G provides basically the extra capacity, the foundational technologies to squeeze more capacity in the existing bands as well as provide new spectrum to handle the scale of traffic. And as well as, the 6G standards itself is going to introduce more AI-native protocols, which is going to adapt to the user application and needs. And also, it's going to leverage both the on-device AI and the network AI. You're going to have the ability for a user to have multiple devices that can communicate to the network. You're going to have distributed compute protocols, because if you run a lot of these workloads on a sleek Glass or a watch, the battery will run out quickly. So you will need to offload a lot of these workloads, whether it's perception or rendering or even multimodal AI-based models. Some of it will have to run on the phone or the Glass, and some will have to be offloaded to the network. And so that's going to reduce overall power consumption and basically enable all-day usage. So 6G is working on providing this complete package in an AI-native world.
Daniel Frankel:
The demand for the computer is greater than ever, so the need for a seamless always-on transom is greater than ever. We've talked a little bit about the consumer market, but the enterprise market as well. What kind of services can be unlocked by AI and 6G working together in the coming years?
Hemanth Sampath:
Indeed. What's happening is, there's growing edge AI capabilities. Smartphones today can already do about seven, 8 billion parameters of models. And then what that's going to enable is context awareness at the device, and also at the network edge as well. We're starting to see that build-out wherein you're going to have PetaOps at the network edge, and so that's going to enable tiered inferencing across the device, the network edge and the cloud. And what this all powers is really that a diversity of devices, whether they are robots or cars or IoT devices, they're all running AI agents and they need to be connected to the cloud. And so that's where 6G comes in, and to power all that you have this concept of a digital twin. A network digital twin that could be created, which is really basically mimicking what the real world environment is, what the real world network looks like, and that's going to enable real-time automation. That's directly going to translate to reduced OPEX for the operators.
Beyond that, the digital twin will enable new services beyond our regular data communications because, as I said, it's going to catch all this data from a diversity of devices. So you could enable things like sensing as a service, and so as an example, people are talking about detecting drones using the cellular network, or you could also offer compute as a service. Just imagine if you're wearing a sleek AR glass and you're walking around with an AI agent, and you have to process some compute workloads that could be done at the network edge, and so a network operator could offer compute as a service, or an inference as a service. So the possibilities of going beyond our regular data communications and monetizing it to offer new services tremendously increases in the paradigm of 6G and AI.
Daniel Frankel:
So you're operating in a pretty competitive environment and developing this stuff with proprietary protocols, but maybe you could share a little bit about your specific work at Qualcomm. What progress has been made so far? What, specifically, are you doing? If we can pry into that a little bit.
Hemanth Sampath:
Yeah, that's a great question. And at Qualcomm, we have been working for a few years now already on 6G, both the foundational technologies as well as from a user experience and services perspective, what sort of new protocols and then signaling that can support these new use cases and services. And then you've seen our Mobile World Congress demos. We invite you to come to our 6G webpage, and then our Mobile World Congress demos cover both these aspects. The foundational technologies as well as some of these newer use cases.
And more recently, we just concluded XR trials over 5G Network with T-Mobile and Ericsson, where we use sleek form factor glasses, powered with Snapdragon AR 2 Gen One chipset, where we showcased the workings of AR use cases over a cellular network. And that puts us in a very good position, because 6G will really help at scale with the extra capacity. And then in the course of this year and next year, you can expect a lot more trials with operators and then our partners to showcase some of these new capabilities that's going to come about in 6G.
Daniel Frankel:
Now, these resources are available on websites and blog posts within Qualcomm. Can you point us there?
Hemanth Sampath:
Yes. On the Qualcomm webpage, you can please go to the 6G webpage. We're also having a blog post there, which is going to talk about some of these newer 6G use cases and experiences. And then on top of that, we have links to a lot of our recent Mobile World Congress demos, which covers both the foundational 6G technologies as well as some of the protocols, 6G native protocols like AI native protocols, that support some of these newer use cases and services.
Daniel Frankel:
This seems like only the beginning. It seems like we're going to be talking to you quite a bit over the coming decade about this topic. Looking forward to it. Thank you for sharing the information, and look forward to more.
Hemanth Sampath:
Yeah, thanks a lot, Daniel. And as you said, this is just the beginning and the next few years, you're going to see a lot more news from Qualcomm with our trials with operators and our partners, showcasing some of these new capabilities that 6G will unlock.
Daniel Frankel:
Great. I'm Daniel Frankel on behalf of Payment at the Time Path. Thank you for listening.
Hemanth Sampath:
Thank you.