ATIS’ Next G Alliance has announced the publication of a new report “Roadmap to 6G”. The report presents the first 6G vision for North America and describes major steps that industry, government and academia should take to ensure North American wireless leadership for the next decade and beyond.

The Roadmap offers a timeline to promote coordinated R&D, market-readiness and adoption strategies for 6G technologies with the goal of creating a vibrant marketplace for North American 6G innovation. It describes social and economic, technology, spectrum, applications and sustainability opportunities in creating North American 6G leadership and recommends governmental actions and standardization strategies for achieving them. The industry-driven approach focuses on North American priorities as well as the region’s global alignment goals.

More than 600 experts from 80 Next G Alliance members representing industry, government and academia came together to create this report. Their robust participation contributed to the report being developed in less than a year after the launch of the Next G Alliance National 6G Roadmap Working Group, the group that authored the Roadmap.

“This report will ensure North America proactively aligns all critical sectors vital to 6G success to create a foundation for North American global leadership,” said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller. “Beyond its technical contributions, the Roadmap shows how 6G can benefit society and industries in a variety of sectors – as well as how North America will become an epicenter of innovation-driven economic growth in a new era of wireless.”

The International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems for 2030 and beyond will be developed as a global standard to better serve the communication needs in every continent of the world. In creating the North American 6G Vision presented in the Roadmap, the Next G Alliance identified six audacious goals that address top priorities for North America’s contribution and leadership in future 6G-related global standards, deployments, products, operations and services. They encompass advancement of trust, security and resilience; an enhanced digital world experience; cost efficiency spanning all aspects of the network architecture; distributed cloud and communications systems; an AI-native future network; and sustainability.

“We are excited to publish the first version of the Next G Alliance report, the Roadmap to 6G,” said Amitava Ghosh, Next G Alliance National 6G Roadmap Working Group Chair and Nokia Fellow, Nokia Strategy & Technology. “The report is the outcome of tireless effort from the Roadmap Working Group leadership team and its members with support from other Next G Alliance Working Groups. It provides insight into how we can realize the six critical goals encompassing our North American vision for 6G and includes a lifecycle roadmap, a 6G timeline and recommendations for the development of 6G technology.”

“The Next G Alliance Roadmap provides an important foundation for North America to advance more rapidly toward the 6G future,” said Next G Alliance Managing Director Mike Nawrocki. “The National 6G Roadmap Working Group will now turn its focus to 6G research priorities and proposed government actions that will deliver a successful 6G marketplace.”