EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023 Panel Session on 'Sustainability challenges and opportunities for 6G'

Researchers, experts and thought leaders working on the sustainability impacts of ICT and telecoms recently came together to discuss the Sustainability challenges and opportunities for 6G in a panel session at the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023. Quoting from the event website:

Motivation and Background: Sustainability is in focus for the 2030 society and is therefore naturally a key challenge for future networks to address. The ICT community needs to consider both a direct impact from networks (labelled Sustainable 6G), working on reducing footprints, and an enabled effect from use of networks (labelled 6G for sustainability), working on supporting use cases that bring about sustainable transformation of society. Important aspects to discuss are trade-offs between different types of sustainability, and possible trade-offs between performance benefits and societal benefits.

Questions: 

  • What is the biggest sustainability challenge with current networks?
  • What is the most important step to take in 6G to reduce the environmental footprint from ICT?
  • Do you see any good possibility for 6G to address the UN SDGs?
  • Are there any sustainability risks that 6G could give rise to through its usage?
  • How do we best ensure that 6G is developed in a direction that addresses sustainability challenges?

Participants: 

  • Chair: Micaela Giuhat (Moderator) (Microsoft, US)
  • Pernilla Bergmark (Ericsson, SE)
  • Ali Rezaki (Nokia,)
  • Liesbet Van der Perre (KU Leuven, BE)
  • Thierry Lestable (TII, AE )
  • Azeddine Gati (Orange, FR)

The video of the session is embedded below. Presentations have not be shared publicly. I was also glad to see one of the speaker proposing that from a sustainable point of view it may be better to have 6G being rolled out in 2033. My personal view is that there is no reason to accelerate 6G timeline, especially from technology maturity point of view, the earliest standards should be released is 2030. This will allow the 6G to have proper solutions, without workarounds and hacks (see my old post).

Happy to hear your views, please add them in the comments below.

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