- A Call to Action brings the U.S. and more than 20 partner nations together around 6G leadership, security and standards
- AT&T wants 6G to move beyond 10-year generational cycles and toward continuous innovation driven by software, open networks and AI
- Panelists stressed that 6G shouldn’t repeat some of 5G’s early missteps, including the NSA-to-SA transition
Rarely did the phrase “Winning the race to 6G” come up during a 6G event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. That’s probably good because not too many people think there was a lot to celebrate from the 5G era, even though “winning” was a constant refrain in the early days of 5G.
The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) hosted the event that focused on the launch of the “Call to Action for 6G Leadership and Security," a joint initiative between the United States and more than 20 other nations. It’s also tied to President Trump’s 2025 Presidential Memorandum on – wait for it – “Winning the 6G Race.”
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) earlier this week announced the initiative in which participating governments have pledged to strengthen cooperation in 6G over the next 12 months and beyond.
Much of the discussion Wednesday focused on “trusted” vendors, i.e., not China, as well as the need for AI-native 6G, open networks and interoperable equipment, satellite low Earth orbit (LEO) compatibility and international standards development, among other topics.
What is 6G?
While not a whole lot is known about what 6G will look like exactly, panelists said it’s not too early to make it a priority.
Nokia’s CTO Pallavi Mahajan recently spoke about the need to build networks that can evolve at the speed of software, noted Glenn Reynolds, VP Government Affairs, North America and head of the D.C. office for Nokia.
Given the need for speed, it’s definitely not too early to be talking about all things 6G. “I don't think this is early. I think we're right on time, and we need to all be here in this room today,” he said during a panel on the role of industry in the 6G Call to Action.
The industry will be the driver in standards and other efforts, but governments around the world need to step up and be part of the conversation. “We really all need to be moving in the same direction,” he said.
5G not totally trashed
Many in and outside the wireless industry have dubbed 5G a great disappointment because operators spent a lot of money to deploy it and no great killer app emerged.
But not everyone trash talked 5G.
“We build 5G around the world every day, so that still has quite a bit of life in in it,” said Jeff Marks, VP of Government & Policy Advocacy at Ericsson. “As we see 5G standalone grow, we'll also see the capabilities of 5G and the use cases of 5G come to greater fruition.”
One of the things that won’t happen with 6G is the introduction of the 5G non-standalone (NSA) network before 5G standalone (SA), he noted. A lot of operators are just now deploying 5G SA, which is where a lot of the true benefits of 5G are derived.
Another issue that stunted 5G at the beginning, he said, was a focus on millimeter wave, which doesn’t provide the kind of coverage and scale that operators get from mid-band spectrum. That’s not expected to be an issue in 6G, although some of the spectrum bands being eyed for 6G are higher than the mid-band spectrum designated for 5G.
In the U.S., the good news is a spectrum pipeline is in place, with an upper C-band auction tentatively set to start on April 27, 2027, although that spectrum won’t be ready for deployment until December 2030 for top markets and July 2031 for other areas. Juniper Research expects the first 6G connections to launch in late 2029.
Internationally, work at the World Radiocommunication Conference 2027 (WRC-27) will be critical to set the stage for some degree of spectrum harmony, panelists said.
AT&T: Let’s focus on software
Chris Boyer, VP, Global Security and Technology Policy at AT&T, said he was encouraged to see the Call to Action developed by both the U.S. government and all its partners around the world.
One of AT&T’s priorities is to set the direction for 6G and not wait for things to emerge from places like 3GPP. “We really need to be setting that direction now and I think, given the fact that the 6G standards are going to be by definition international, it’s great to see that we have 25 countries kind of aligned on a common vision,” Boyer said.
He reiterated a message that has been coming from the operator community for years now: 6G needs to be open, interoperable and not trigger a wholesale hardware refresh. Rather, it should be more in the direction of software-based where hardware updates are done depending on the use case and what people want to do with the network.
“We actually think we need to take an approach to 6G that's more about continuous innovation than it is about these 10-year generational cycles,” Boyer said. “In our view, in the age of AI and all these other things happening so quickly, literally what I'm talking about today in three months can be totally different … We have to be thinking about these things on a much shorter time frame.”
6G is all about AI
Of course, AI is playing a central role in 6G, the first “G” that will be AI native.
“6G will arrive in a world where AI workloads will dominate traffic patterns, service expectations, security requirements and in order to manage this, telecom networks will need to be designed AI-native on Day One, not retrofitted later,” said Ruth Berry, senior director and head of Policy, Government Relations at Nvidia.
5G networks are trending toward software-defined architectures, which will help accelerate the transition to 6G, where open-source, software-defined networks will help ensure global interoperability, she said.
She flagged that Nvidia and a bunch of industry partners – including Nokia, Cisco and SpaceX – this week launched the Open Secure AI Alliance to develop open source cybersecurity tools that can be deployed across AI infrastructure, including telecom networks.
Matt Pearl, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS, said 6G is not just about communications. It’s about the entire tech stack that will integrate AI models, cloud, edge devices and more, both for commercial and government gains.
“All of these different technologies are going to converge in 6G in a way that's really, really critical,” he said. “This is ultimately … a major technological transition.”
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