Author: Reg Cox, Anita Doerer
The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) is leading the way for the future of communications networks by taking a proactive stance and emphasizing the need for intelligent technology evolution and new paradigms that enable successful value creation and delivery. guide you in the right direction. NGMN’s recently published 6G Position Statement: Operator View provides clear recommendations from the mobile network operator (MNO) community, highlighting the challenges currently facing the industry and challenges the traditional approach of implementing technology and emphasizes the importance of: Streamline network operations, prioritize sustainability, and deliver exciting new 6G services and features for the benefit of end users. Our position statement calls on the industry to embrace this transformative new direction.
A total of 19 strategic principles have been identified in this position statement and categorized into four groups. These four groups are:
- Innovations and new services – including new International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) 2030 capabilities and seamless integration between fixed and satellite networks.
- Operational priorities – include demands for network simplification and operational automation, alongside absolute energy savings.
- Guiding Principles – Include the requirement for a globally harmonized 6G standard and a clear obligation not to essentially upgrade 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) hardware to support 6G.
- Spectrum – Includes licenses for both existing and new IMT spectrum from IMT-2020 onwards.
This article details each group’s visionary stance and highlights key insights from their landmark publications.
The MNO community believes that 6G will build on and extend beyond the solid foundation of its predecessor, 5G mobile networks. However, this fundamental continuity does not alleviate the challenges faced by MNOs. Infrastructure deployment is one such challenge, but under the right circumstances, infrastructure deployment can be justified in delivering attractive 6G services to end users. In addition to overcoming these challenges, MNOs are steering toward network separation and open, interoperable, cloud-native architectures. This deliberate move towards network fragmentation and open cloud architecture is driven not only by operational necessity, but also by enhancing current and future network flexibility and agility in responding to end-user demands. It is strategic and aims to achieve improvements in
Beyond the fundamental aspects, 6G will go beyond the capabilities of 5G and continue to offer new innovations and new services such as collaborative sensing and communication, artificial intelligence (AI) integration, and augmented and augmented reality (XR/AR). It is expected. Enables virtual reality (VR) experiences and enhanced positioning and seamless interoperability between fixed and satellite networks. Additionally, 6G should also continue to inherently support network-related application programming interfaces (APIs), facilitating an environment conducive to the development of new service offerings that leverage the full range of network capabilities.
The MNO community within NGMN is committed to ensuring that 6G not only delivers tangible benefits and compelling new experiences to end users, but also simplifies and sustains network operations. Our members’ operational priorities serve as a guide for the industry, aiming to address practical challenges and ensure seamless integration of 6G.
These priorities recognize the importance of network simplification to reduce operational costs through scalable and flexible deployment models. Another key operational priority is to implement absolute energy reduction measures in both mobile and fixed networks. This initiative
