Qualcomm’s research unit, 6G Foundry, is promoting a new lower-band system spectrum design that it claims will significantly improve wireless capacity, coverage and efficiency. This comes as European MNOs plead for more spectrum for 6G. We suspect the MNOs are posturing, and what the industry really wants is software-only upgrades for the next generation, which makes Qualcomm’s pitch worth reviewing. As the market explores various plans for 6G, one lasting element has been that the next iteration should not require expensive RAN upgrades, especially as so many features of 5G and 6G are bleeding into 5G Advanced (5G Standalone) and the lines between generations are rightfully blurring. With this in mind, it was unusual to hear European operators calling for more…