The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) subcommittee on 6G presented its final report in December with recommendations for developing this technology in the United States.
The biggest changes to the draft version are two new suggestions and an additional use case recommendation.
According to the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC), NTIA “should prioritise its long-term, strategic planning and preparation for use of next-generation
communication technologies.”
The report goes on to say that this effort could be coordinated through the newly established Interagency Spectrum Advisory Council and incorporated into its charter to advise NTIA on spectrum policy matters and inform NTIA on the diverse missions of the federal agencies.
CSMAC also recommends that NTIA establish a 6G Subcommittee during the next term of CSMAC to continue examining issues such as use cases, spectrum, additional capability, interoperability, and risk.
In addition to those suggestions, the subcommittee proposed that NTIA “seek additional funding to allow the Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) to develop federal agency use cases in partnership with the federal agencies and in alignment with the ITU-R timeline.”
Previous 6G Findings
The remainder of the document had few changes compared to the draft version.
Among the initial assessments, which remain the same, the subcommittee noted that carriers are currently focused on deploying 5G and moving on to 5G-Advanced. According to the report, this process should take “a few years.”
On the other hand, RAN and device vendors are aggressively defining 6G technology elements and spectrum for 6G.
“Given the early stage of its development, the state of 6G is currently enduring a clash between visionary ideas and practical realism,” the report reads.
“Equipment providers and researchers are driving the development of 6G visionary ideas on the evolution of legacy as well as newly defined use cases until service providers complement the process by providing operational and business requirements for their choice of use cases commensurate with their business objectives and plans.”
Also, the subcommittee highlighted that carriers and network infrastructure vendors see open networks and Open RAN as key for 6G.
