Nokia's Four Blueprints for Building 6G from Day One

Much of the discussion around 6G understandably focuses on technology. New spectrum, AI-native air interfaces, integrated sensing and communication, non-terrestrial networks, extreme massive MIMO and new device types are just some of the topics regularly discussed.

However, there is a bigger question that needs to be answered before all these technologies are brought together: what kind of network are we actually trying to build?

Nokia has been addressing this question through what it calls its four 6G blueprints. Rather than describing four different network architectures, these blueprints serve as foundational designs and strategic roadmaps for guiding the evolution of today's 5G networks towards future 6G standards.

The four are:

  • Value Blueprint
  • AI Blueprint
  • Sustainability Blueprint
  • Security Blueprint

Together, they reflect Nokia's four wider principles for 6G: value-centric, AI-native, sustainability by design and security by design.

This is an interesting way of looking at the next generation of mobile technology. Previous generations have often been defined primarily through improvements in technical performance. More bandwidth, higher data rates, lower latency, greater capacity and improved reliability have all been important measures of progress.

6G will obviously have to improve on many of these metrics, but Nokia's argument is that technical performance alone is no longer enough. The network also needs to create meaningful value, incorporate AI from the beginning, reduce its environmental impact and remain secure against a much more complex set of future threats.

Nokia describes these four blueprints as the foundational designs and strategic roadmaps that will help guide the transition from 5G towards 6G standards. The aim is to influence how the industry thinks about 6G now, while the architecture and standards are still being shaped, rather than trying to add these capabilities afterwards.

The Value Blueprint is perhaps the most important starting point.

Every mobile generation introduces impressive new capabilities, but the telecoms industry has repeatedly struggled with the question of how those capabilities translate into new revenue and sustainable business models.

Nokia wants 6G to be value-centric from the beginning. This means looking beyond faster connectivity and asking how the network can help create new services, support new device ecosystems and enable applications that bridge the digital and physical worlds.

Potential 6G applications include immersive experiences, advanced robotics, large-scale digital twins, intelligent machines and swarms of autonomous AI agents. Non-terrestrial networks could extend connectivity far beyond conventional coverage areas, while sensing, positioning, compute and AI capabilities could turn the mobile network into a platform for services that go well beyond transporting data.

The important point is that these capabilities should not be developed simply because they are technically possible. The industry needs to consider who benefits, who pays and what measurable value is created.

This links closely with a broader change taking place in 6G research. Technical Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are increasingly being complemented by Key Value Indicators, or KVIs. Instead of only asking whether a new technology provides more throughput or lower latency, researchers are also considering its economic, environmental and societal value.

Nokia's own 6G vision describes value-centricity as one of its four core principles, with the aim of creating an application ecosystem that connects digital and physical realities while enabling economic and technological growth.

The AI Blueprint goes much furher than simply using AI to optimise the network.

AI is already used extensively in telecoms for planning, optimisation, anomaly detection, energy saving and automation. 5G-Advanced is also introducing additional support for AI and machine learning in different parts of the system.

For 6G, however, Nokia envisages AI being built into the network from day 1.

An AI-native network would incorporate AI across devices, the RAN, core network and management and orchestration domains. This creates a challenge because simply adding separate AI solutions to every part of the network could lead to duplicated functions, incompatible interfaces and unnecessary complexity.

The blueprint therefore proposes common capabilities that can support activities such as AI model training, inference, model storage, data handling, lifecycle management and cross-domain orchestration.

Data is particularly important. AI systems need mechanisms to collect, manage, catalogue and exchange data across different network domains. They also need access to appropriate compute and storage resources. An AI-native network may need to decide where inference should take place, whether on the device, at the network edge or further into the cloud, depending on latency, energy, privacy and performance requirements.

Nokia's vision also covers both AI for the network and the network for AI.

AI for the network includes using artificial intelligence to improve network design, operation, automation and performance.

The network for AI is about supporting distributed AI applications, edge inference, intelligent devices, robotics, agentic AI and other services that may depend on connectivity, compute and data being coordinated across multiple locations.

The important message from the AI Blueprint is that AI cannot simply be bolted onto 6G afterwards. The data, compute, lifecycle management and orchestration mechanisms needed to support it have to be considered as part of the architecture itself.

The Sustainability Blueprint takes a similarly fundamental approach.

Every new generation of mobile technology becomes more energy efficient, but increasing traffic, growing network density and more computing can still result in higher overall energy consumption.

The introduction of AI adds another challenge. AI can help networks save energy, but training and running AI models also consumes energy and other resources.

Nokia therefore argues for sustainability by design rather than treating sustainability as an optimisation exercise after the technology has been developed.

Its approach uses what it calls future-back design. Instead of starting with today's networks and gradually improving them, the idea is to consider the conditions that networks will face in the 2030s and then work backwards to identify the design principles needed today.

Nokia identifies five sustainability-by-design principles:

  • Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction
  • AI sustainability
  • Hardware efficiency
  • Resilience and climate change adaptation
  • Value-oriented design and operations

This makes the Sustainability Blueprint broader than simply reducing the power consumtion of base stations.

It considers the complete lifecycle of networks and devices, the environmental impact of AI, more efficient use of hardware and materials, resilience to extreme weather and whether new technologies create sufficient value to justify the resources they consume.

There is also an important distinction between sustainability in 6G and 6G for sustainability.

The first is about making 6G itself more sustainable.

The second is about using 6G to help other sectors become more sustainable through improved automation, remote operations, digital twins, intelligent transport, better resource management and other applications.

This is also where AI, sustainability and value become closely connected. A new AI-based network function may improve performance, for example, but its benefits need to be balanced against the energy, compute and resources it requires.

Finally, the Security Blueprint recognises that the networks of the 2030s will face threats and requirements that go far beyond those considered when earlier mobile generations were designed.

6G networks are expected to support AI-native functions, sensing, digital twins, immersive applications, increasingly autonomous machines and seamless movement between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.

All of these create new attack surfaces.

At the same time, AI will be used by both attackers and defenders. Future quantum computers could also threaten some of the cryptographic methods used today.

Nokia's approach is based on security by design. Security, privacy and trust should be incorporated into the architecture from the beginning rather than added as additional layers later.

Importantly, this does not mean throwing away everything developed for 5G. Nokia expects 6G security to build on the strong foundations already available, reinforcing them where necessary and introducing new approaches for genuinely new challenges.

Areas that need to be considered include quantum-safe cryptography, AI-driven threat management, protection of AI models and data, privacy-preserving data use, automated security and secure integration of new capabilities such as sensing and digital twins.

An AI-native network also has to consider the trustworthiness of the AI itself. An intelligent network that can make autonomous decisions needs mechanisms to ensure those decisions are predictable, explainable and protected from manipulation.

What I find most interesting about Nokia's four blueprints is how interconnected they are.

AI can improve network performance and create new services, contributing to value. It can also reduce energy consumption, contributing to sustainability. At the same time, AI itself consumes resources and introduces new security risks.

Stronger security creates trust, which is necessary before businesses and society will depend on highly autonomous 6G services.

Sustainability cannot be separated from value because a technically impressive application that consumes enormous resources but creates little real benefit may not be sustainable.

And value ultimately depends on all the others. A network that is intelligent but insecure, high-performing but environmentally unsustainable, or technologically advanced but unable to create useful services will struggle to justify the enormous investment required to build it.

This is perhaps the main lesson from Nokia's four 6G Blueprints.

6G will still need new radio technologies, new spectrum, better devices and major improvements in network performance. But the difficult decisions being made today are not only about how fast the network should be or what frequencies it should use.

They are also about what value it should create, where intelligence should reside, how resources should be used responsibly and how trust can be maintained in an increasingly autonomous and interconnected world.

Nokia has explored each of these themes in a four-part 6G Architecting Tomorrow livestream series covering the Value, AI, Sustainability and Security Blueprints. The complete playlist is embedded below for anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into the thinking behind these four pillars.

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