A Reality Check on the 3GPP Study on 6G Use Cases and Service Requirements

At the 3GPP TSGs#111 meetings, held in Fukuoka from March 9 to 13, 2026, 3GPP approved the first TSG SA study on 6G Use Cases and Service Requirements (TR 22.870), with over 590 pages outlining the motivation for a 6th Generation where “anywhere” is expected to become “everywhere” connectivity. The main question, however, is whether these are truly new 6G use cases, or largely an evolution of what we already have today.

TR 22.870 offers an early glimpse into how the industry is shaping its thinking around 6G use cases and service requirements. As a Stage 1 study, it is intentionally broad and exploratory, covering everything from AI-native services and network digital twins to integrated sensing, satellite connectivity and energy efficiency. It is also a reminder that at this stage of a new generation, the industry tends to cast the net wide.

What stands out in this report is not just the number of use cases, but the recurring pattern that accompanies them. Many sections explicitly acknowledge that existing features already partly or fully address the functionality being described. This is not a weakness of the document. It is an honest reflection of where we are today. The challenge is interpreting what this actually means for 6G.

A large proportion of the use cases feel like natural extensions of 5G and what is now being standardised as part of 5G-Advanced. Enhancements to network slicing, improvements in resilience, better energy efficiency, support for non-terrestrial networks and continued evolution of XR services are all important. However, they are also areas where significant work is already underway. The gap between what exists and what is being proposed is often one of degree rather than kind.

The same applies to network intelligence and automation. Concepts such as autonomous network management and digital twins appear prominently throughout the report . These ideas have been discussed for years and are already seeing early deployments. What 6G promises is scale, tighter integration and perhaps more standardised approaches, but the underlying direction is clearly evolutionary.

Artificial intelligence dominates the document in both scope and ambition. There are use cases for AI agents communicating with each other, distributed AI model training, network-assisted inference and personalised AI services . This reflects a broader industry trend where AI is no longer treated as an application layer feature but as something deeply embedded within the network itself.

Even so, it is worth questioning whether the network is the primary constraint for many of these scenarios. In practice, limitations often lie in compute resources, energy consumption, data availability and governance. Current 5G networks already support edge computing and low latency communication, enabling many forms of AI inference today. The step to 6G may improve efficiency and coordination, but it does not fundamentally unlock entirely new categories of AI applications on its own.

One area that does feel more distinctive is the convergence of communication and sensing. The report includes a wide range of use cases involving environment reconstruction, infrastructure monitoring, cooperative perception and intelligent transportation systems . These scenarios point towards networks that not only transmit data but also actively perceive and interpret the physical world. While early research exists, this level of integration is not yet widely deployed or standardised, and it may represent a more meaningful shift.

There are also scenarios involving large-scale coordination between devices, such as UAV swarms, collaborative robots and multi-agent systems. These push requirements around latency, reliability and synchronisation in ways that could expose limitations in current architectures. Similarly, the idea of seamless integration between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, delivering consistent performance globally, is ambitious and not yet fully realised.

Even in these cases, the distinction is often subtle. It is not always that existing technologies cannot support these use cases at all, but rather that they may struggle to do so efficiently, economically or at scale. This raises an important point. The justification for 6G may be less about enabling entirely new services and more about making certain classes of services viable in practice.

TR 22.870 serves its purpose well as a catalogue of possibilities and a starting point for further work. It reflects the collective input of a wide range of stakeholders, each bringing their own priorities and perspectives. As a result, it is both comprehensive and, at times, overlapping.

The real challenge now is to move beyond listing use cases and towards identifying where genuine gaps exist. Not every interesting idea requires a new generation of technology. Some can be delivered through continued evolution of existing systems, better integration of computing and networking, or improvements in implementation.

The most compelling case for 6G will come from those scenarios where current approaches fall short in a fundamental way, not just in terms of performance targets but in architectural capability. Until then, it is useful to view many of these use cases through the lens of evolution versus real gap, and to ask a simple question. Is this something we cannot do today, or something we have not yet done well enough?

TR 22.870 can be downloaded from 3GPP's website here, download the latest document.

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