Many politicians and suppliers in the USA believe they can harness Open RAN and cloud-based 5G architectures to pivot the mobile networks supply chain back to their hi-tech industry, and away from those of China (and implicitly, the Nordics or Japan).
But the 5G battle lines are, to some extent, laid down, while 6G still has everything to play for, and there are various initiatives – from Department of Defense projects to government funds – to make 6G a US-driven set of standards. However, a new trade group, the Next G Alliance, set up to manage North America’s progress to 6G, is not taking the America-first view, but will be led by AT&T’s CTO Andre Fuetsch and Ericsson’s Jan Söderström
The new group is working under the auspices of the USA’s Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), and is putting together a ‘6G Roadmap’. Fuetsch will be the chair of the governing body while Söderström, who heads up Ericsson’s Silicon Valley R&D center, will be vice chair.
AT&T’s Brian Daly, Nokia’s Devaki Chandramouli and VMware’s Benoit Pelletier will lead the Next G Alliance’s steering group.
The Roadmap aims to deliver “a common vision and destination point for achieving North American 6G wireless leadership,” the group said in a statement. “It will define what is needed in terms of research needs, technology developments, service and application enablers, policies and government actions and market priorities.”
Despite the inclusion of Ericsson and Nokia at the leadership level, the Next G Alliance explicitly excludes participation by organizations on the US entity list, or those “subject to export, re-export and/or transfer licensing requirements” – so that excludes Huawei and ZTE.
Other full Alliance members are mainly from North America. Carriers include Charter Communications, T-Mobile, Verizon, Bell Canada, Telus and US Cellular. Vendors and webscalers include Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, Ciena, Cisco, Intel, JMA, Mavenir, and others.
The presence of a cableco like Charter is interesting because operators are increasingly absent from significant R&D activities and therefore standards groups – though the US cablecos’ collective R&D arm, CableLabs, is increasingly influential in wireless and converged standards.
But some operators expect to revive something of their old role as R&D leaders. Orange, which spent about €672m ($792m) on R&D in 2019, claims to be in a small group of four or five operators that invest heavily in applied research, of relevance to future developments like 6G, rather than just in development that is closer to market. “In the world, there may be only four or five major operators maintaining strong investments in applied research,” said Nicolas Demassieux, SVP of Orange Labs Research, during a webinar last week. “You have AT&T in the US, Docomo in Japan, China Telecom in China and Orange in Europe.”
But he thinks significant R&D will become a “health insurance” against restrictions on access to intellectual property that could result from geopolitics, and the potential splits in the world between different technology zones anchored by the USA on one hand and China on the other.
Demassieux said: “Yes, we can go to a Chinese maker infringing IP and get revenue from them. But the most important thing is not revenue but freedom of action. The world is getting very tense with battles between patent trolls and large companies who are actually attacking each other using IP as a weapon.”
“While innovation frequently occurs in response to market needs, long term technology leadership takes strategic foresight and critical stakeholders committed to reaching the desired future state,” said ATIS CEO Susan Miller, in a statement. “With its leadership set and work on both sustainability and the 6G Roadmap launched, the Next G Alliance is well positioned to create a national vision for the next decade.”