LIVE FROM MWL UNWRAPPED: THE 5G EVOLUTION: Verizon CTO Yago Tenorio told Mobile World Live the time is now for the telecoms industry to figure out what 6G will be to scale AI for new consumer and business use cases – but is adamant lessons must be learnt from the staggered network approach to 5G.

Tenorio explained one of the pitfalls for deploying 5G was developing non-standalone (NSA) and standalone architectures (SA.)

“There are many things that we learned with 5G that we need to take as lessons to not repeat in the 6G world,” he said. “One of them was NSA and SA. We needed a 5G standard that you could deploy at that point in time and quickly, and the only way to do that was through NSA. In hindsight, it was probably the lesser evil.

“But we need to also acknowledge that it created a divide in the capacity that we rolled out for 4G was not something that you could aggregate when you moved to 5G standalone.”

Speaking during Unwrapped: The 5G Evolution, Tenorio pointed to the US operator’s recent launch of its 6G Innovation Forum as the starting point for 6G. He said the bottom-up initiative focuses on developing foundational 6G technologies, exploring new use cases and ensuring global alignment in standards and interoperability.

“There is a huge hype about AI, and of course, AI embedded in the network, but also a network that enables AI,” he said, “I think that’s a good example, and maybe that’s the killer [6G] application that we need to think of.”

He explained AI embedded in networks, AI wearables and the “massive enablement of AI for society” are areas 6G should start to map out now instead of building general purpose technology and “wait for someone to come use it”.

In addition to deciding what 6G will be, Tenorio said it is also key for operators and vendors to contribute to and follow 3GPP’s 6G standards.

“We don’t plan to deviate at all from that,” he noted. “If we have a view that there is a need to do something that’s not addressed properly or not covered, what we will do is to drive that input into the 3GPP to try to make the standard better.”

Tenorio stated the global telecoms industry “lives on a huge economy of scale,” but fragmenting 6G standards will make it more difficult for all parties.

“From a chipset to the device manufacturer to the network equipment manufacturer, they will no longer be able to aggregate on volumes,” he explained. This industry needs volumes to survive.

“Deviating from a single global standard for everybody may not be a wise thing to do for anyone involved.”

Lastly, Tenorio said 6G should be built on the shoulders of virtualised RAN or open RAN to upgrade 5G networks to 6G by using software.

 “There are many things that we learned with 5G that we need to take as lessons to not repeat in the 6G world,” he said. “We need to take that learning to 6G and make sure that the core is a software upgrade to 6G based on the 5G core that we just rolled out today.”