Last week’s  Brooklyn 6G Summit, hosted by Nokia and the NYU Wireless research center, explored two critical pillars of 6G development: artificial intelligence (AI) and value creation.  Speakers and panelists from technology, business, academia and regulation organizations came together to shape the future of wireless in a three-day event on the campus of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

More than 300 participants, including more than 60 speakers and panelists, attended this year’s gathering at the New York University (NYU) Brooklyn campus, and many more tuned in for the livestream, to provide an eclectic gathering of academia, industry analysts, service providers, equipment vendors and startups from various corners of the telecom industry. These included a wide swath of customers, partners, engineers and innovators, as well as representatives from Verizon Wireless, KDDI Research, Intel, NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm, Axiom Space and more.

A series of keynote addresses, lively panels and physical demonstrations showcased a wide range of 6G topics surrounding AI and value creation, such as energy efficiency, security, network digital twins, the integration of Non-Terrestrial Networks and more.

Nokia President and CEO Justin Hotard (x-Intel) led off in a recorded fireside chat with Nokia’s new chief technology and AI officer Pallavi Mahajan, in which he described how Nokia will be at the heart of a new hyper-digital 6G world and the AI Super-cycle and AI-Native networks that will accompany it.  “What’s going to change as we look ahead is the opportunity for AI to be a bridge between the physical and the digital world. We realize that for networks to be valuable in this world they need to actually be different. They need to be designed from the start for AI.”

The evolution from 5G (IMT 2020) to 6G (IMT 2030) is expected to generate faster speeds, lower latency and better performance. But 6G looks to offer much more value in creating a fusion of the digital, physical and human worlds, according to Summit participants.

NVIDIA Senior Vice President Ronnie Vasishta highlighted the centrality of AI to the 6G future: “6G really distributes AI to the entire population and enterprises. It’s the connectivity fabric for AI, and it cannot be underestimated how important that is,” he said. “When you look at a dynamic world and you also start to use the network as a sensor, AI becomes essential. It’s very different from the 5G world.”

Arpit Mehta, the Head of Americas Carrier Product Management at Meta, discussed the future of immersive experience with AI glasses, while wearing a pair of futuristic spectacles on his face as he described what they could do.

“6G, so far, in my view needs to solve two priorities: the uplink problem and the device problem,” said Yago Tenorio, SVP Strategy at Verizon Wireless, explaining what needed to be done to unlock the vast 6G potential. “What matters to the customer is: give him a native, cellular, connected sensor network that he can deploy around him in any way he wants.”

Lively panel discussions included those on AI data, the role of verticals in 6G value creation and the impact of large telco models and network digital twins.

There was also a special segment devoted to the Nokia Bell Labs centennial celebration, in which Nokia Bell Labs President for Core Research Peter Vetter outlined how the 6G advancements of today stand on the shoulders of giants from the past 100 years of Bell Labs technology.  “The big innovations that happened at Bell Labs in our 100-year history shaped our wireless industry,” Vetter said. “But we are not only reflecting on what happened in the past, we reflect and highlight what we are doing to shape the next 100 years. And that starts for the 6G era in the next decade.”

The summit included nearly 40 demonstrations from Nokia and participating companies, showcasing the vast potential of future 6G networks. It also featured an Open House, where NYU Wireless students showcased a wide range of cutting-edge technologies on campus, such as nanotech labs, various robotic arms, robots and even robotic dogs.  Later, some of these same students took on their professors in the first 6G Brooklyn Summit Game Show. The Jeopardy-style game included categories such as history, fundamentals, spectrum, 6G, AI/ML and Non-Terrestrial Networks. In a crowd-pleasing upset, which bode well for the future of technology, the students emerged victorious by a decisive margin. In was an outcome that did not trouble in the least one of the professors who participated.

“We always want our students to do better than we did, so I’m delighted they beat us,” said NYU Wireless founder Ted Rappaport.  One of the main characteristics of the Brooklyn 6G Summit is the focus on strong collaboration between industry and academia to shape the future 6G-era together. Appropriately, the opening panel was devoted to the U.S. academic view of 6G. “When you bring people together when there is a new technology, you can make great strides,” Rappaport added. “It’s how you build a comfort level and a consensus on what’s most important. We are doing that for 6G.”

The summit honored several trailblazers in telecommunication technology. The annual Pioneer Award was presented to Dave Forney, namesake of the influential Forney algorithm in coding theory and the inventor of the modern modem. The Lifetime Academic Achievement Award was bestowed upon Prof. Andrea Goldsmith, the president of Stony Brook University (SBU) and the former Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton, who shared her captivating life story and trailblazing path as a female technologist in a celebratory dinner in her honor.

It all added up to what Head of Nokia Standards Peter Merz said was a hopeful message for the future. “We had candid discussions with excellent people that are moving the ecosystem forward. There is still a lot of work to be done but I am confident that we as a community will make it happen,” he concluded.

References:

https://www.b6gs.com/agenda

https://www.nokia.com/blog/the-12th-brooklyn-summit-marks-a-tipping-point-toward-the-6g-era/

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