Summary of CW '6G devices of 2030' Seminar

Last week, Cambridge Wireless (CW) held a seminar looking at 6G Devices in 2030. It featured talks from Ericsson, Counterpoint and Parallel Wireless.

The following was the description of the event from the website:

While 5G is being rolled out at a very rapid pace across the globe, 6G is expected to arrive around 2030. It is hard for us to fathom how our world will change in the next 5 years, let alone the next 10 years. While we can speculate that 6G will be a faster and far better version of 5G, the needs of society and individuals will evolve, and there will be an expectation of a new generation of devices with increased sophistication. 

Beyond smartphones, many new devices are ‘in the works’, for example centred around drones, wearables, cars and extended reality (XR; a collective term from augmented, virtual and mixed reality - AR, VR and MR respectively). These will need to evolve for 6G. However, devices are not monolithic, but are made of various components from batteries, to screens, speakers, buttons, chips, antennas, etc. In many cases they all need to evolve to deliver a more sophisticated form factor. Will the development of components keep pace with requirements of 6G vision, technology and devices?

This short event will explore how existing devices will evolve over the next 10 years and look at some of the newer devices, gadgets and features that would be enabled by advancements of technology and 6G vision.

Magnus Frodigh, VP & Head of Ericsson Research talked about ‘The Journey Towards 6G’ looking at how during the coming years, towards 2030, we will have a very strong technology development coinciding with the rollout of the 5G networks. In parallel to the development on the use cases we will see the evolution of the 5G network platform. The gap between the needs of the use cases and the capability of the platform, together with the availability of new technologies, will define the 6G systems.

His talk included an interesting video which is embedded in the tweet above. Magnus has also talked about Ericsson Research vision beyond 5G earlier which is available here. His presentation is available here.


Neil Shah, Partner and Vice President of Research, Counterpoint talked about ‘Mapping the Evolution to 6G-Centric TeraEconomy!’: The transition from GigaEconomy (5G era) to TeraEconomy (6G era). His presentation was a nice scene setter for the seminar. His presentation is available here. He also wrote a blog post on Counterpoint here.

Zahid Ghadialy, Senior Director, Technology & Innovation Strategy, Parallel Wireless in his talk on the topic ‘Limitless Imagination vs Technology Limitations’, looked at the science fiction scenarios that 5G promises, which expectations are being set for 6G, and what we may realistically be able to deliver in 2030.

In addition, he touched on the topic of how there are three different evolutions going forward. The Network and network architecture evolution, the 6G connectivity evolution and finally the devices evolution. While we may lump all of them together as 6G, they will each evolve on their own. The devices evolution should take app ecosystem into account as well and try and facilitate a way for devices to become aware of the OTT apps as well as the apps becoming aware of each other as well. His presentation is available here.

For a limited time, you can access the recording of the webinar through CW's online portal by following the instructions here.

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