According to a recent Dell’Oro Group report, global telecom operators will spend $500 billion on 6G infrastructure over the next decade. During that same period, the overall network equipment market is projected to grow at just a 1% CAGR. Telco revenues are expected to grow at 3% over the next decade.  The report’s base-case scenario envisions 6G as an evolutionary technology that builds on Massive MIMO, the existing site grid, and wider channel bandwidths to deliver step-change improvements in RAN economics.

“While the G decoupling movement is gaining momentum for all the right reasons, the most likely scenario is still that 6G will be another G, with 6G RAN capex expected to accelerate toward the end of the decade,” said Stefan Pongratz, Vice President of RAN and Telecom Capex Research at Dell’Oro Group. “At the same time, operators are in a much stronger position today from a network capacity perspective than they were during the transition from 4G to 5G. As a result, cumulative 6G RAN revenue during the first six years of the cycle is projected to be 10 to 20 percent lower than during the comparable period of the 5G cycle.”

Additional highlights from the June 2026 6G Advanced Research Report include:

• 6G RAN is expected to scale rapidly, with cumulative RAN revenue and wireless capex during the first six years projected to exceed $100 B and $500 B, respectively.
• 6G is not expected to expand the overall RAN market. Instead, the baseline scenario projects the broader RAN market to grow at a 1 percent CAGR between 2030 and 2034.
• Both Sub-7 GHz and cmWave spectrum bands are expected to play important roles in 6G deployments, although momentum behind spectrum above 7 GHz continues to build.
• Cumulative 6G RAN investments between 2029 and 2034 are projected to account for approximately half of total RAN capex during the same forecast period.

About the Report

Dell’Oro Group’s 6G Advanced Research Report offers an overview of the RAN market, including tables showing total RAN revenue by technology (2G-6G) from 2000 to 2034. 6G RAN is analyzed by spectrum (Sub-7 GHz, cmWave, mmWave), by Massive MIMO, by RF Power (Macro, Micro, Pico), and by region (North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, China, Asia Pacific Excl. China, and CALA). To purchase this report, please contact us by email at [email protected].

Editor’s Counterpoint:

We don’t agree with Stefan’s statement that “6G RAN is expected to scale rapidly,” based on the standards and specification delays and failures of ITU-R’s IMT 2020 (5G) and 3GPPs 5G SA core network specifications.  A phased ramp is more likely, as early commercial launches begin around 2031, then slower scaling through the early 2030s as spectrum, devices, infrastructure, and business cases mature.  At this point in time we have no idea what the IMT 2030 RIT/SRITs will be or 3GPPs 6G Core network functionality.

ITU WP5D’s IMT-2030 work is still setting requirements and evaluation criteria, and candidate RIT submissions are only expected in the 2027–2029 window; that points to a standards process that finishes just as first deployments begin, not one that guarantees immediate mass rollout. The ITU also says the technical performance requirements are minimum levels for consideration and do not guarantee real-world deployment performance. In other words, approval creates the foundation, not instant scale.

What’s needed by 2030: globally harmonized work, spectrum studies across low, mid, mmWave, and sub-THz bands, and network operator/vendor roadmaps. Once those crystalize they could support fast 6G uptake in premium pockets such as dense urban zones, enterprise campuses, and fixed wireless/edge-centric use cases where the economics are strongest. That means “rapid” is plausible in targeted launches, not across entire national footprints.

6G will likely face the same structural constraints that slowed 5G: spectrum availability, device ecosystems, deployment costs, and the need to integrate with 5G-Advanced during the transition time period. Higher-band operation, especially above 100 GHz, is technically feasible but still requires mature propagation, hardware, and deployment architectures before it can scale widely. The result is usually a long coexistence period where 5G remains the coverage layer while 6G expands selectively.

The likely pattern is “launch first, scale later,” with meaningful expansion depending more on spectrum policy, device availability, and operator ROI than on the standard approval itself.

Deployment timeline

• 2026–2027: Standards and requirements work intensifies, with 3GPP/ITU alignment still being shaped and operators pushing for realistic deployment timelines.

• 2028–2029: Pre-commercial and early pilot networks appear, especially in dense urban, enterprise, and testbed environments.

• 2030: First commercial 6G launches are widely expected, but these will be selective rather than universal.

• 2031–2033: Main capex ramp and larger-scale rollout window, as more of the macro grid, transport, and edge layers are upgraded.

• 2034 and beyond: Broader geographic expansion and more mature multi-band coverage, with 6G taking on a larger share of traffic and enterprise use cases.

Capex outlook

Dell’Oro’s view that the 6G capex ramp starts around 2030 (we think it will be 2031), while cumulative 6G RAN investment in 2029–2034 could account for 55% to 60% of total RAN capex in that period. A separate data-driven forecast argues global 6G capex could land somewhere in the sub-$1 trillion to about $1.5 trillion range over a decade, depending on traffic growth and spec assumptions. That is a wide band, but it is consistent with a technology transition that reuses much of the existing macro grid rather than replacing everything at once.

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Sebastian Barros wrote:

6G will deliver necessary operational improvements. It will utilize new 7GHz spectrum, improve radio performance, and lower the cost per bit for operators still recovering from the 5G capex hangover. However, consumers and enterprises do not pay a premium for faster pipes. Connectivity is now a hyper-commoditized utility.

If Telcos want to capture value in this new economy, they must stop defining their core business as “connectivity.” Telecom is a distribution business.

Networks serve as the last-mile delivery system for the global economy. In the past, the industry distributed voice, SMS, and 8K video. Today, the asset being distributed is intelligence. Hyperscalers are building massive, centralized AI data centers, but that compute power requires a physical delivery mechanism to reach users.

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References:

Current 6G Trajectory is Evolutionary, According to Dell’Oro Group