Future Network System as Open Platform in Beyond 5G/6G Era | IGF 2023 Day 0 Event #201

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi

The exploration of future networks’ potential, such as Beyond 5G, is under scrutiny, particularly in developing nations like those in Africa. The feasibility of their implementation faces several considerable obstacles, from high costs and substantial energy demands to the pressing need for infrastructure development. South Africa, for example, is currently grappling with an energy crisis and persistent power cuts, exacerbating the high energy consumption required to operate these networks. The added burden these systems would place on existing power supplies adds an extra layer of complexity. Economic viability presents additional challenges, especially in countries with a variety of competing economic interests. Together, these factors underscore the broader sentiment of uncertainty and concern.

However, the expected impact of future networks isn’t entirely negative. Indeed, they could stimulate extensive economic participation and growth by increasing purchasing power and catalysing economic engagement. With the potential to unlock significant development, the advent of future networks could also invigorate subsidiary industries like textiles.

In response to these Industry 4.0 challenges, regulatory frameworks must adapt to remain relevant. Agile and transparent regulations and regulatory sandboxes can foster increased industry participation, and this tool allows the private sector to demonstrate regulatory compliance without the necessity for a full-scale Research and Development budget.

Spectrum-sharing and interoperability are given significant importance in the context of networking systems. Increasing market diversity, these two aspects not only promote resource expansion but also facilitate participation from smaller players. This challenges the existing network system’s tendency to favour the most financially robust entities, thereby creating a more equitable playing field for all market participants.

Moreover, specific working contexts should ideally incorporate localised data. This could trigger the development of bespoke knowledge systems, promoting a more inclusive and applicable approach to systems.

At a global level, spectrum harmonisation is deemed essential for enhancing sustainability and accessibility in global mobile communication. Currently, the lack of harmonisation, often a product of global debates favouring larger stakeholders, engenders a fragmented landscape. Therefore, collaboration and knowledge sharing are critical to overcoming this disparity.

An emergent sentiment perceives the necessity for a new approach to digital world regulation, considering many existing regulatory models obsolete. Digital regulators are becoming increasingly research-oriented, moving away from traditional regulatory tools such as ‘call termination’.

Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are progressively deriving economic value from the obligations associated with spectrum auctions. Rather than seeking substantial profits, this strategy aims to sustain the development of similar Wi-Fi projects in venues like schools, thus addressing wider developmental imperatives and serving broader communities.

Community networks are seen as challenging the traditional business model within the telecommunications sector. Bridging the true access gap in underserved rural areas with low economic participation and significant physical barriers, these networks diverge from industry norms.

Looking ahead, the development of 6G faces staunch resistance, primarily due to the substantial energy demands it would incur. Concerns primarily stem from the developing South, which faces the risk of being overlooked amidst the rapid pace of technological evolution. Without addressing issues of energy sustainability, the leap into 6G could consolidate systems that are little more than ‘5G plus’. To sidestep these challenges, international collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst countries are strongly advocated. These partnerships could leverage the progress of more technologically advanced nations to shape the policies and regulations of developing nations, firmly grounding these developments in sustainability.

Tony Quek

Tony Quek presented a detailed overview of Singapore’s leading role in the development and implementation of O-RAN technology, emphasising on various potential research areas such as cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and sustainability. He disclosed that Singapore commenced an investment of US $50 million in 2019, instigating the construction of a test bed for research revolving around O-RAN technology. Singapore also launched the execution of its first open, disaggregated radio access network (O-RAN) in 2021.

Quek highlighted Singapore’s geopolitical and political neutrality, maintaining that this could provide an advantageous position in the creation of secure and trustworthy O-RAN systems. In his perspective, this unique geopolitical position provides Singapore with leverage in becoming a pivotal player in the evolution towards 5G technology and potentially beyond.

Furthermore, Quek endorses employing Open-RAN technology as an effective instrument to enhance AI/ML capabilities within the network, offer enhanced transparency, and exploit the advantages of vertical services integration. The flexibility of O-RAN in employing AI/ML across diverse controllers and providing opportunities for vertical services integration were emphasised.

Additionally, Quek underscored the importance of sustainability in the deployment of O-RAN and 5G technology, accentuating the environmental impacts critical for Singapore and Asia as a service region. He highlighted that Singapore has planned the introduction of a carbon tax and aspires for the city-state to lead in services sustainability within Asia.

Quek also stressed the necessity for technologies to demonstrate measurable social and economic impact, and the importance of remaining at the forefront in certain sectors by adopting innovative technologies. He offered the successful synergy with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on a future communications project as evidence to his argument that innovative implementation of new technologies requires regulatory flexibility.

Moreover, Quek champions the concept of a ‘sandbox’, a creative ecosystem fostering collaboration amongst industry, academia, and vendors. He warned that neglection of sensitivity towards Spectrum regulations could trigger potential territorial issues with neighbours, advocating for a cautious approach to these regulations.

Simultaneously, Quek advocated extraordinary shifts within the telecoms industry, contesting the subscription model, while proposing an infrastructure akin to the S-line capabilities. He also emphasised the need to broaden the market beyond Asia, identifying Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam as possible arenas.

Quek also underlined the balancing act between long-term research and immediate goals such as Plugfest, Mobile World Congress (MWC), and other key events where progressive advancement can be showcased. He spotlighted synergistic partnerships as a method for achieving a cumulative result exceeding individual efforts.

Finally, Tony Quek voiced optimism regarding the potential outcomes from a workshop in which he participated as a panelist, focusing on open service platforms in the era beyond 5G or 6G. He highlighted that this event, organised by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), should yield substantial results.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue expresses a prevailing positive sentiment towards the prospects of 6G as a formidable platform for new solutions and services, all grounded in a multidisciplinary approach. As a researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland, she articulates that the evolution of 6G will mark a natural progression from 5G, emanating from an enhanced emphasis on network sharing between local networks and current users of the spectrum.

However, she underscores that the trajectory of 6G must be guided by paramount considerations surrounding sustainability. She avers that the UN Sustainable Development Goals should serve as the design criteria for 6G. This perspective is punctuated by apprehensions regarding the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector’s total energy consumption. Matinmikko-Blue encapsulates both the enablement effect – ICT’s potential to catalyse sustainable practices across different sectors – as well as the sector’s own environmental footprint.

In dissecting the process of 6G development, Matinmikko-Blue opines that a broader spectrum of stakeholders must participate in the dialogue. She notes that the current conversation is largely led by existing major players, including infrastructure vendors and operators. Nonetheless, she perceives an immediate need to incorporate the viewpoints of end-users into this decision-making process. By acknowledging a shifting ecosystem and business environment, she advocates for the inclusion of such diverse perspectives, promoting a sustainable transition towards 6G.

When discussing the global aspect of mobile communication, Matinmikko-Blue registers concern about spectrum divergence and fragmentation, primarily due to nation-specific bands for local 5G. This fragmentation, she asserts, presents a challenge as mobile communication heavily hinges on the global use of the same equipment. She maintains a neutral sentiment about harmonised regulation. Despite recognising the distinct regulatory requirements for public and private networks, she argues that harmonisation is essential for efficient and streamlined mobile communication. She identifies the harmonisation of the spectrum as a formidable challenge, especially in light of varying viewpoints on the 6G spectrum across Europe.

Matinmikko-Blue also alludes to the evolution of business models in the wake of 5G. She posits that 6G will engender new business ecosystems involving multiple organisations, prompting a shift in the business model from a company-centric focus to an ecosystem-oriented approach. In this context, she identifies the emergence of new enterprise opportunities centred around various usages of 6G, where value addition will be paramount. Despite this, she acknowledges a transformation in the mobile connectivity business with the onset of 5G, underscoring the enduring licenses held by operators and sustained gains from monthly subscriptions.

Subsequently, she underscores the critical role of understanding user expectations in the transition from 5G to 6G. Citing the disappointment users experienced due to unfulfilled promises with 5G, Matinmikko-Blue emphasises the importance of managing expectations realistically. She suggests striking a careful balance between comprehending the technological capabilities of 6G while meeting users’ expectations. She highlights the vital role of social scientists in facilitating this transition and preventing a potential recurrence of the 5G experience.

Lastly, Matinmikko-Blue stresses the importance of adequate funding for 6G research, citing existing support from national programmes and the European Union. However, she advocates for respecting the agreements of higher-level government entities, such as the EU and the US Trade and Technology Council. In doing so, Matinmikko-Blue accentuates the need for the inclusion of social scientists in the research process to ensure the transition towards 6G is appropriately responsive to societal needs and expectations.

Audience

The discussions centred on two critical aspects within the realm of Innovation and Infrastructure: Spectrum harmonisation and the advancement of 6G network technology. There was a distinct emphasis on the need for Spectrum harmonisation, a challenge stemming from divergent national strategies concerning Spectrum usage and management.

Dr Marie-Méconneau-Ambroux underscored these differences, focusing particularly on the discrepancy observed between Finland and Germany. This sheds light on the more extensive issue of geographic discrepancies in this sphere. Ms Faye Mwangi further highlighted the fragmentation of Spectrum, specifically addressing its uneven distribution and application across distinct regions.

Countering this fragmentation, Mr Angus Stein championed the role of technology, suggesting it as a viable solution. He articulated that with the swift development and application of technology, it could be a decisive tool in addressing such challenges, promoting harmonisation and more efficient utilisation of Spectrum.

The conversation shifted towards the development of 6G networks and the degree of standardisation required for its evolution. It was noted that several standards are currently operating for 4G and 5G networks, reflecting a variation in regional requirements and technical abilities among nations. Intriguingly, each country tends to propose different standards to meet their specific needs.

The dialogue, however, turned to the possibility of needing fewer standards for the evolution of 6G. Mass production was recognised as a potent force guiding this tactic. The large-scale production and global consumption of technology could demand more unified standards to streamline manufacturing processes and reduce complexity.

In conclusion, the various viewpoints illuminated the intricacies of Spectrum harmonisation and 6G network progression. They identified opportunities for technology to bridge gaps and further standardise approaches while allowing for diversity to accommodate unique circumstances and needs where necessary. These discussions deepened understanding about the complexity of harmonising communication technology and the concept of standardisation in 6G network development.

Moderator

The discussion primarily centred around the potential challenges, opportunities, and future prospects of digital infrastructure, with a particular focus on 5G and 6G technologies. The debate assembled an array of experts ranging from policy geniuses, tech gurus, business model strategists to individuals contributing insights from developing nations, creating a comprehensive discussion.

The participants emphasised the instrumental need for harmonisation and standardisation of equipment, perceiving it to be fundamental for sustainability and accessibility. In talks on developing African nations and other outlier regions, the active role these areas are playing in international tech debates was applauded. They identified the lack of harmonisation and standardisation as a potential cause for issues such as lack of interoperability and fragmented spectrum use.

In unison with these sentiments, a consensus unfolded on the need to remodel traditional regulations to cater for the ever-evolving digital age. It was brought to light that obsolete regulatory tools, such as call termination, necessitate a reassessment. Regulators are evolving into more digitally savvy entities, with focus skewing more towards research than regulating.

Another central point made was about the vital role of regulators in understanding the nuances of the technologies they regulate. The importance of a neutral platform as a learning spot for comprehending operational frameworks was also highlighted.

A significant portion of the discourse revolved around the ‘sandbox concept’, distinguished as an effective platform for trialling new business models as well as technologies. Narratives of these trials mentioned a two-year time frame to convince a telco to test the sandbox scheme, endorsing a realistic collaboration amongst industry, academia, and suppliers.

The discussion touched on spectrum sensitivity, acknowledging its impact on neighbours and thus accentuating the need for careful usage. This factor supports the premise that policy evolution can be accomplished by creating persuasive ecosystems making a viable case for change.

Dividing views amongst nations on the spectrum aspect of 6G development emerged as a major concern, with numerous European countries showing disinterest in any spectrum for 6G. However, within this debate, the concept of multiple proposals for 6G standards also materialised. Despite challenges, some participants welcomed the notion of accepting multiple 6G standard proposals.

The sustainability of the prevailing subscription model for telecom services was also questioned, underpinned by the increasing financial burden related to escalating infrastructure costs. Advocacy for alterative business models, drawing upon the S-line model by Docomo, were seen as more adaptable with the potential for broader market access.

The dialogue ensured consideration for developing countries where the cost of adopting progressive technologies such as 6G could be prohibitive. The panel concurred that device costs were a significant consideration in these regions, reflecting the recurring theme of inclusivity in the conversations.

Further expounding on the argument, participants underscored the importance of funding in both academia and industry to pioneer advancements in 6G technology. Alongside this, the necessity to instil key principles such as sustainability, inclusiveness and trust in 6G research was also highlighted as a focal point for 6G pursuits.

The conversation concluded on an optimistic note, acknowledging the need to continue discussions and collaborations centred on these themes. The moderator reiterated the importance of understanding variations among different nations and regions, suggesting this as a key factor in propelling collaboration and research for future networks. Stakeholders expressed interest in prolonging these important discussions, maintaining a forward-thinking, and future-oriented focus on the trajectory of technology.

Abhimanyu Gosain

The evolution of telecommunications standards, primarily 5G and 6G, is significantly influenced by public-private partnerships and collaborations. Abhimanyu Gosain’s influential work with the National Science Foundation and over 35 global industry member companies has founded the vision for future networks. His blueprint and reference architectures have been adopted by research groups worldwide, indicative of the pivotal role partnerships play in progressing telecommunications.

A shift towards more energy-efficient and virtualised networks is crucial for future advancements. The recent deployment of 5G underlined the need for such networks, despite revealing its shortcomings in energy efficiency. Accordingly, the argument stipulates that 6G should be more adaptive and energy-conscious than its predecessor.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation stand at the core of these future networks. Automation across various infrastructure facets is deemed necessary for network optimisation. Moreover, reliable AI models are key in safeguarding data privacy and security. Progress in AI and machine learning is expected to offer more refined control over available spectrum voxels.

However, these advancements present certain challenges. Regulatory concerns demand immediate resolution to ensure seamless network functioning. As AI and machine learning become central to networks, understanding and explicability of these AI systems take precedence.

Whilst technological adoption is growing worldwide, high device costs due to royalties could impede progress in developing countries. Hence, addressing device cost could fast-track technology adoption rates.

Global collaboration efforts are burgeoning to realise future networks beyond 5G and 6G. Collaborations between governments, industries, and academic researchers promote unified viewpoints, connecting disparate stakeholders and aligning regional competencies for international cooperation. This presents an opportunity for various regions to contribute to a more substantial and collaborative global system.

However, the consumer response to 5G indicates a disparity between expectations and delivery. This highlights the need to reassess the existing ‘build-it-and-they’ll-come’ mentality, ensuring both technological advancements and consumer expectations are met.

In conclusion, the success of future networks relies on a co-developmental and collaborative approach, involving all stakeholders from inception. This allows the creation of standards and spectrum allocation that align with all parties’ interests. These insights underscore the significant role of international collaboration, AI integration, and regulatory management in shaping the future of telecommunications.

Moderator:
of National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Japan, and we organised this session and we would like to start this session. Session name is Future Network System as Open Service Platform, the Beyond 5G, 6G Era. At the first of this session, we would like to, on behalf of our organiser, we would like to greet, greetings from the NICT’s Vice-President, Dr. Ibaraki-san, I’m sorry. Thank you, Chihiro-san. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m honoured to be here at the first of today’s panel discussion, representing the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, NICT. I’d like to extend a warm welcome to all of you and I’m delighted to have this opportunity to engage in meaningful discussion on this important topic. We are taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity of the Internet Governance Forum, IGF, is being held in Kyoto, where we can reflect on the future of network systems and I look forward to chattering new directions. Our theme for today is Future Network System as Open Service Platform in Beyond 5G, 6G Era. This theme explores how information and communication services will evolve and create new values through open innovation. We have assembled a distinguished panel of experts from around the world to explore this critical topic in depth and I believe that together we get gain valuable insights. Today’s discussion has the potential not only to shape the future of communication systems, but also to foster a common understanding of information and communication policies and research directions worldwide. NICT would like to play a leading role in research and development for the realisation of Beyond 5G and to enhance international co-ordination in this field. However, in order to achieve this important vision, stakeholders worldwide need to share a common vision and work together. Therefore, in today’s panel, we aim to integrate the diverse perspectives of Beyond 5G experts from around the world to deepen our understanding and foster collaborations. So let’s start today’s discussion. I look forward to hearing your valuable insights and opinions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the very warm words from Dr. Ibaraki and I would like to move to the next step and I would like to hand over the mic to Dr. Ishizu who is really planning this session and who will moderate the panel session. Okay, Ishizu-san, please. Thank you very much, Hosako-san. Could you show? Okay. Yes, the session is future network system as open service platform in Beyond 5G 6C era. So agenda is like this. To begin with, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Kentaro Ishizu. I’m a director of Beyond 5G design initiative of NICT and my background is wireless technology including spectrum sharing or cognitive radio heterogeneous networking, this kind of thing. I’m honored to serve as a moderator of this important session and looking forward to discussions on this important topic with you. Okay, so now I would like to go into the session. First, I would like to explain the motivation of this session and also I would like to present initial input on this topic. Okay, so I’m now moving on to the agenda item number two. Okay, motivation of this session. A future networking system with Beyond 5G 6C technologies are coming soon and the system would be composed of combinations of uncountable subsystems brought from many stakeholders from not only ICT industry but also across broad fields of industries. A new platform would be necessary to deal with such complicated systems. The platform might be based on an open concept so that small to medium-sized enterprises with cutting-edge technologies such as TR2 or 3 can directly join the future ecosystem. So moreover, even companies in developing countries could have opportunity and motivations to naturally and easily join the ecosystem. This is very important. So this session would like to focus on feasibility of the new platform in the Beyond 5G 6C era. Not only advantages but also concerns or issues must be there so we need discussions. Discussions are required based on experience and knowledge from various professional activities in different regions. As you can see, we have a distinguished panelist from different continents so I’m really looking forward to the discussion. Okay, so I would like to now introduce the distinguished four panelists. First, Mr. Tabisa Faye, she is a counselor for Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. The second panelist is Mr. Abhimanyu Ghosain, Senior Director at Institute for World Internet of Things, Northeastern University, USA. The third panelist is Dr. Maria Mattimikobu, Research Director at University of Aul, Finland. The last panelist is Professor Tony Quek, Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Okay, so first I would like to input some information and then I would like to ask the panelist for a presentation. Okay, so NICT is only National Institute for R&D on ICT. We have around 700 researchers in ICT area. NICT has set Beyond 5G as one of interdepartmental research areas. My input is about the vision and R&D activities of NICT, especially regarding concept and open service platform. Okay, so NICT has published Beyond 5G successive white papers. The first version was published in 2021 and the latest version in 2023. The latest version was published in this March. The contents are a result of a discussion with more than 100 volunteering researchers in NICT. The white paper starts with five scenarios of future life in 2030s. Then by backcasting from the scenarios, we have extracted and categorized key technologies to tackle as current R&D topics. Okay, so there is a nice video. We have a nice video envisioning actually the future life described in the white paper. So I think it’s better to show this video rather than explain by myself. So please take a look. It takes just two minutes. The technology of NICT will shape the future. Let us take a look at how NICT will play a part in our lives to come. No matter how advanced the remote technology is, it won’t shift from the moon. It won’t shift. If we use NTN and space-time synchronization as predicted by AI. I see. Okay, here we go. NTN First of all, NTN is a communication network that connects the earth to the universe in three dimensions. And space-time synchronization can synchronize the time and position of cyber space and physical space to enable synchronization. If you have these, you can share information without worrying about location and enable new communication through avatars. In addition, we are promoting the use of terahertz waves and building a super-high-speed next-generation communication network. NICT NICT will create a bright, exciting future through inspirational next-generation research and technology. Thank you very much. What do you think? I think there is a very new type of life waiting for us. And new technologies must be there. So we need to tackle those technologies. Okay, so I would like to explain the structure of white paper. First, we have scenarios. And based on the scenarios, we have extracted use cases. Each of the three scenarios has a number of use cases. Each use case summarizes a system to be used and their details. Each key technology summarizes a technology to be used in the future and why it is needed, current status, and so on. This is how the white paper is organized. And now I would like to very briefly introduce the scenarios of the white paper. Scenario 1 is organized as a diary of a director working in a manufacturing company. In this scenario, people jack in remotely onto cybernetic avatars and human-type robots. And then next one, scenario 2, is focusing on working style when people go to the moon and conduct underground material survey and so on. So on the moon, we send avatars and then we control remotely so that we can work from the earth. The third one is regarding our activities area. And we are extending our active area from the ground to the 3D area. And we are going to use drones more actively, skycars or skytrucks and so on. So many things are flying. And if we think about the future, we also need to highlight a shadow part of the future. This is a message that Beyond 5G has such perspective, not perfect as we show in the scenario 1, 2, 3. We would like to extend our discussion to ethical, legal and social issues, so-called LC, in addition to technical activities. Scenario 5, the last one, focuses more into details of human life. Our new working style is going to be changed by using perfect research resource matching by cross-industry orchestration with AI. Those are scenarios. Maybe you think this is really fantasy, but actually these are not fantasy. We have some evidence, and based on the evidence, we imagine the future. And that’s how we have those scenarios. These are key technologies for Beyond 5G we have extracted from the scenarios. T1 to T3 are close to radio access and networking technologies. T4 is non-terrestrial network, so-called NTN technologies. T5 is a technology for space-time synchronization. We need precise location and time to enhance the application and communication. And T6, data-wide security and reliability. T7 is regarding innovative application. As such, the technologies are so distributed for Beyond 5G. This implies that systems are going to be increased and not very easy to be composed as one system, one box. So that’s how we need the following discussions. This is another important concept of Beyond 5G, cyber-physical system, or CPS. Physical space is the real world where human beings are really living. And cyberspace is an emulated world realized on computers. In the physical space, there are so many communication systems and application systems out there, such as non-terrestrial networking systems like satellites or airplanes. And also on the ground, there are new wireless systems. For example, using terahertz band, such systems will appear. Then sensing data is sent from the physical space to cyberspace. And then in the cyberspace, the data is accumulated, analyzed, and the future will be predicted. Then cyberspace actuates the physical space for optimization. And the important thing is the circulation of the cycle. The one cycle is not, maybe it’s already realized, and the circulation of the sensing and actuation is important, and it is realized not by humans, but by machines. Okay, so who creates the Beyond 5G system? It is too complicated for a single organization to build up a whole system by itself. It is already difficult now, but in the future, it is much more complicated. So it’s completely difficult for one organization to realize the system. So different organizations, including operators, providers, and individuals, need to bring their own subsystems, and somehow we need to combine the systems. This is an important concept. And this is, I think, the most important slide in my presentation. The concept of cross-industry orchestration. As you can see, on the left-hand side, there are mobile operators. There are mobile operators, and in the future, to enhance the spectrum frequency, spectrum sharing efficiency, for example, or to realize new applications, they need to collaborate with each other. And also, if you look horizontally, another industry, like hubs, or satellite communication, or metaverse, as you can see, or maybe it’s not shown, but for example, drone control systems, or traffic management systems, maybe, or other systems, for example, medical systems, or other things, I don’t know, maybe smart cities. Another industry also needs to collaborate with each other. So that’s why we have orchestration in the upper part. And by this, there might be an opportunity for everyone, including small, middle enterprises, to join this world. And optimized combinations of subsystems can be found by algorithm, maybe, in the orchestrator. the orchestrator may use some AI algorithm. The more systems are connected, the more service combination will be. So that’s why the concept is very, very important for the future. And beyond the 5G architecture for open service framework is now under consideration in NICT. Also, we break down the concept and really designing the functions and interfaces of those functions. You can see the orchestrator is, as I explained, but also you can see the service enabler. From users, it is very difficult to understand everything about the cyber-physical system, because there are so many complicated systems. So it is hard for users to understand the systems, subsystems. So there is some function. We call it service enabler. And service enabler receives the request from users and communicates with orchestrator to realize that to meet the requirement from users. And anyway, we are now investigating the details of them and designing a proof of concept system to discuss with many stakeholders. OK, this is my presentation. Now, I would like to ask position talks from the panelists, from panelists closer to me. OK, so I will switch to the presentation. OK, then, Tabisa-san, could you start your talk? I’m just waiting for it to come on. OK. All right, thank you very much. Good afternoon, very late afternoon to everyone in the room.

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi:
My name is Tabisa Faye Mwangi. I am from ICASA, which is the ICT regulator in South Africa. I serve as a counselor there. This afternoon, I’ll just briefly give you the regulator’s perspective, but also the African perspective on where we are with regards to beyond 5G. And I think we provide a very different perspective in terms of our readiness, our participation, as well as the challenges that we face. The challenges that we see would impact the developing nations. So just a brief introduction around myself. Like I said, I’m a counselor at the regulatory authority in South Africa. I have an extensive professional background in management consulting prior to joining the regulator last year in December. My areas of interest are in ICT and renewable energies and their socioeconomic impact on the current context and the future that we’re all trying to shape and influence. I have working knowledge in 18 African countries in the sub-Saharan region, but I do have exposure to a lot more. So I think I can firmly say that I do speak for the African, or at least the sub-Saharan African context. Next. All right, I just want to quickly touch on future networks beyond 5G. And really, for developing nations, and I’d say the developing African nations, this is an inevitable reality. But when we get to participate and how we participate is really what is under debate. So we know that future networks have the potential to unlock immense development and growth for developing nations. South Africa is no exception to this. While increasingly, more African countries have access to 5G spectrum, with South Africa coming to the market during COVID through temporary spectrum assignment, and more recently, licensing through an auction in March 2022. The cost of rolling out 5G, however, is what has really hamstrung the true impact, or realizing the true impact of 5G in South Africa. The second challenge that has been seen is more around the infrastructure, the supporting infrastructure that is required for this to be realized. And this is mainly around electricity and the current electricity crisis that we’re having. As much as we want to leave no one behind, the economic feasibility of rolling out across the nation is one that is rather distant at the moment. The energy costs in a country that is battling with a national energy crisis and rolling blackouts, and the energy consumption and consistency that’s required to sustain these kind of networks is something that is not yet feasible in South Africa. But it’s not so distant, and it’s not something we have not tried, despite all the odds. This doesn’t stop us, like I say, from participating. We continue to shape and share the African insights. And future networks stand to have a great impact on agriculture, which remains to be a big contributor towards a lot of the GDPs in African countries. And I think as I go through the slide, I also, at the end of the slide, I’ll just share a bit of what we envision it looking like, or rather what I personally envision it looking like. So unlocking the value chain of agriculture and all vertically integrated industries would exponentially increase the economic value of agriculture. One of those vertically integrated industries is banking and finance, including and bringing into the circle more economic participants and active participants at that, which continue to be increasingly powered by ICT innovation. And then we also look at safety and security on future networks, which will determine user uptake and user base. And lastly, I spoke about the electricity crisis just now. And this is what really is one of the greatest impacts around us getting towards beyond 5G. Earlier this year at the 5G huddle that was hosted in Singapore, we spoke quite extensively around the energy constraints and the difficulties in rolling out and how we cannot really move to 6G if we haven’t solved for the energy demands of these networks. And in doing so, if we want to do that, if we push ahead with 6G in its current prototypes or pilot forms, we risk leaving behind the developing African nations. I think before I go into the slide of just explaining the African context, I want to paint a picture of what future networks could do for an African individual or a South African individual. My father lives in rural South Africa. He refuses to move to the city. He works there, and he still lives in his rural home. But one of my father’s things that he does is he’s a farmer of sheep. He has more than 200 sheep. And every year, he needs to shear those sheep and sell the wool. It’s his subsidiary income to being able to grow his livestock. But once he’s sheared those sheep, he then needs to load the wool into a truck. And then there are four cooperatives all around 200 or so kilometers away from his house, all of which he needs to travel to to get an assessment of his wool and then get a price. And then he will sell to the best offer. Now, imagine if he could shear his sheep, or even before he shears his sheep, drones could come and take samples of the wool, take them back to the cooperatives, or do the analysis, and then be able to then give him the price before he goes out and has to travel 600 kilometers roundtrip on a single day. So that, for me, is how I envision the impact of future networks in an African context. It would increase my father’s economic participation immensely. It would decrease his costs. It would save him time. It would allow him to grow his livestock to an even greater number and contribute. And secondly, it would then also then stimulate the subsidiary industries, the vertically integrated industries, the agri-processing, the textile industry, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m going to quickly go through the African context. And really, what this is is around what are the greatest impacts for us. And I’ve just highlighted a few impacts, six impacts there. The first is the economic growth and the economic participation by increasing the buying power and accelerating the economic participation of all. Secondly is infrastructure development, being able to maintain and expand essential infrastructure to sustain these networks. And then digital inclusion. This is so important. And really, it’s the one thing that underpins anything that we do in terms of future networks. It is the fundamental development imperative. Secondly, collaboration and shared resources. We cannot do this on our own strength. And it’s not just about collaboration in government, but it’s collaboration in the private sector. So the big private players taking on and creating space for the small-medium enterprises, as well as the regulator being more open and transparent in how we do things to allow greater participation with industry, having a light-touch approach to how we regulate, and sharing and leveraging of resources such as research and development. And then being an innovation enabler, being creating a conducive environment for innovation to thrive. And that comes from policy and regulation and how we shape and position ourselves. And then lastly, around sustainability, creating shared value for future generations to come. Next slide. Thank you. Here I’ve just highlighted some of the challenges that we see. And I think I’ve spoken to some of these in my earlier slides. The first is affordability, the cost of rolling out these future networks and establishing them. When you come from a country with so many competing interests, you know, when you’re talking about what we term in South Africa, stomach politics, it’s poverty, unemployment, and, you know, just having basic essentials. You know, the affordability and the cost factor becomes a huge hindrance for us. And then security and privacy, so ensuring that we’re not only just, you know, building these networks with a secure by design framework, but also ensuring that we understand how the open systems work, that we understand how we are going to regulate the open systems. And we position the regulator and the policy makers to be able to stand in that gap and provide that assurance. The regulatory frameworks, the agility of regulatory is something that is slowly coming into the African context. And so we’re hoping that with the introduction of that agility, it would change a lot of the regulatory frameworks and how we choose to regulate. And then lastly, infrastructure deployment, which I think I’ve spoken extensively to. So open system platforms, I think for me, I just picked four of what I think would be the biggest advantages to these platforms. The first is interoperability, especially when you’re talking about spectrum and it being such a scarce resource. So the ability to share the spectrum, a lot of countries, mine included, we do not support spectrum sharing or spectrum trading. And that becomes a massive legal issue. It is about protecting the value of the asset and giving the regulator the power to still have control over the radio frequency planning. However, you know, there are ways to get around it and ways to think about it to promote economic viability, et cetera. The second is about scalability and flexibility. So being able to scale at our own pace, being able to adopt things that are within the context that they’re going to be used in. And then around the ecosystem growth, I spoke earlier about collaboration and I’ll close off just now around collaboration and having that vibrant ecosystem that creates a space for small medium enterprises. And then lastly, around security and privacy. The promotion of security by design, you know, to reduce the regulatory framework expectations and limit the instances of reactive regulatory instead of proactive. The use of agile and innovative regulatory tools and I’ll speak in my next slide about that. And in South Africa, you know, we do have that legislation around privacy and protection of data. But what we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around is how we’re going to regulate the systems, the data systems that are going to be, you know, running or fueling beyond 5G networks. Next slide. And then in my last slide, I just touched a bit about cross-sectoral collaboration. And really, I think this is so important for developing nations, especially in the African context. So there are some regulatory considerations that need to be put to mind. And how do we create that agility? How do we make ourselves relevant? We don’t necessarily have the budget for a full-scale R&D. And so what do we do with what we have, considering the competing interests? And so sandboxes come to mind, you know, trying to start using regulatory sandboxes, inviting the private sector to do the tests and run the regulatory compliance in those sandboxes. And for us to then feed off the research and the development that comes out of that. It’s a quick win in terms of R&D when you don’t have the budget. And then digital transformation. And really, this is around the localisation of data. So ensuring that we have African solutions for the African context. The monetisation of models. And this is around diverse revenue streams and shared revenue models. Being able to have a transparent framework around that. Market competition. I think one of the greatest things when it comes, when you want to have transparency, is that we have a competition regulator. And the competition regulator immediately thinks collusion, collusion. And that’s not always the case. So having healthy market competition, which breeds innovation. And then lastly, global connectivity. We really cannot do this within our own strength. I’ve spoken about the competing interests that are the centre of a lot of African countries. So being able to tap into international research and international value chains to leverage the research that we are doing and to power how we move forward is very important for us. Thank you.

Moderator:
Okay, thank you very much. Okay, next move on to Gosain-san. Okay, now it’s… I’ll make it to the screen. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I would like to add my welcome to this panel session and thank you for being here. Appreciate the invite to NICT and the other sponsors.

Abhimanyu Gosain:
Next slide, please. So I’m Abhimanyu Gosain from Northeastern University out in Boston, Massachusetts from the USA. Just a quick introduction. Just a quick introduction of myself and the perspectives I bring to this panel discussion. And just a quick disclaimer. I don’t… All the views and opinions here are my own personal ones, so please don’t attribute those to any of the agencies that you see listed here. So primarily, I work with the National Science Foundation on applied research projects for building future platforms for 5G, 6G. There’s a flagship project called Powered Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research, which was a public-private partnership that I’m going to get into a little bit. But primarily, this was the foray for the Science Foundation and about 35 industry member companies, global industry member companies, to define and shape the vision of 5G. So I’ll talk about some of the lessons that we’ve learned and how they could be applied to the 6G era. I’m also involved with the US Department of Defense in their 5G Future-G program as a senior advisor where we are shaping how does the US military, the services adopt commercial technologies and dual-use technologies that could also be adapted for military construct. And then lastly, I work with the US Federal Communications Commission on their 6G Technology Advisory Council as a co-chair and then a few various other board appointments. So the idea is to bring you a 360-degree view of what’s happening at technology policy and governance. Next slide, please. So a quick word about, to know and understand where we are going, we need to always reflect from the past. And this is a program that we’ve been working on now coming up in seven years where we set up a public-private partnership to develop an open, programmable research platform to help shape the vision of 5G. So this was a program that was founded in 2017. If you bring the clock back, that was around the time that 5G standardization had already occurred. The standards were in place, but the implementation prototypes, proof of concepts weren’t still there. And if you actually even look today in 2023, global adoption of a 5G standalone architecture is still something that the mobile network operators are working on. And again, I really appreciate the African context where that is still something that needs to be done. But the idea was, and again, the dollar figures are quite nominal. That’s the first lesson that we learned, that it will require a lot more investment to bring together multiple different stakeholders from industry, academia, as well as from the communities that we intend to serve. Get a little bit more technical, next slide please. We funded four research platforms across the US, and we’re also proud to say that the blueprints, and these are the words that I’ll say a lot in the time that’s remaining. The blueprints, the reference architectures that we’ve been able to develop, design, implement, have been adopted by our partner research groups and partner public-private partnerships across the globe. So in Europe, in Japan, in Korea, in Brazil, we’ve been able to work with a very open mindset, the ability to share how we are building a modular, softwareized infrastructure architecture that allows for accelerated research adoption, and the ability to onboard and build on-ramps for stakeholders who don’t necessarily care about the network or the communication. So we saw from the introductory slides, a future platform that we’re gonna talk about, where you’re gonna have multiple industries who frankly don’t care about what network they use. For them, it could just be Wi-Fi. The ability for them to move data from point A to point B in a timely, secure, resilient manner is all they care about. Wherever they get that, they’re gonna go there. And our job here is to develop and push the agenda for mobile network communication standards like 5G and 6G to be the choice there. So these four platforms are across various technology and application use case areas. Starting from the left, the platform out in University of Utah is primarily focused on core underlying softwareized technologies and radio technologies like Massive MIMO, which allows for large number of scaling of antennas that allows you to serve a very diverse region very effectively from a single antenna system. The other one, Cosmos in New York City, is mostly focused on smart communities. So this is deployed in downtown Manhattan, a very, very busy, highly dense area. So we’ve been focusing a lot on millimeter waves and optical communication, and how does that connect back up to smart communities and smart intersections, for example. The third one is focused on UAS. So I really appreciated your sort of future vision of drones flying out for farms. And that actually is conducting a lot of research and onboarding non-traditional industry partners that are using the UAS. And we’re also connecting the UAS mobility patterns with the communication technology. So building an entire UAS unmanned aerial system that is fully outfitted with a 5G radio, and that is a system that can then be deployed for various use cases, be it agriculture, be it transport, be it delivery, or even for communication for fixed backhaul and integrated access and backhaul. Last but not the least, and this sort of resonates quite closely with me as well, is around rural broadband digital inclusion. So this is the last test platform out in Ames, Iowa, which is in the middle of the U.S., very heavily dominated by farmland. And the spirit of this particular testbed was to develop a farm as an anchor, which was the ability to outfit connectivity across multiple hundreds of miles using Xhaul technology. So we are focused on free space optical communication, microwave backhaul technologies, and the underlying theme for all four of them is an open modular architecture that we have developed. Underneath that, there is an asset that we’ve also inherited and developed called Coliseum, which is a large-scale channel and network emulator. And this, I would encourage you to view this as a digital twin. The idea that the cyber-physical systems exist, this is the version where the physical systems that you see that have been deployed in geographically diverse contexts are now taken into the virtual world. So this is a network emulator that allows us to build digital versions of the channel, digital versions of the network, digital versions of the physical locations, and then be able to do early prototyping, validation, testing, modeling in the emulated environment, and then, as a closed-loop feedback, bring that learning back into the physical environment. So this is sort of helping us close that divide. Next slide, please. So this is, again, now, this slide is primarily more from the policy side, and this is the motivation that the USDOD, which is a huge juggernaut and, frankly speaking, a very large customer for commercial adoption of beyond 5G kind of technologies, and the idea here is to leverage the billions of dollars that are being invested and will continue to be invested in developing telecommunications standards. So the idea is how does the USDOD, and this is not, I want to be very clear, this is not with a warfighter mentality. This is primarily looking at DOD as an enterprise because they have multiple application use cases and they fit very nicely into the vision that was presented by NICT earlier where DOD is a logistics customer. They need to move trucks from point A to point B in a timely manner. They want to use AR, VR, and XR for training purposes. So view that as a context that the USDOD is trying to adopt the vision for 5G, and that has happened by installation at 14 U.S. Army bases that are located in the continental United States where experimentation with 5G technologies is ongoing, and then there is a separate office for future G which is trying to understand how does the DOD requirements get inserted in the standardization framework, and I think that’ll also be important when we talk about a future test platform because that has to be the springboard from which standardization takes place because that is a common platform where data test results are produced, validated, and can be mutually agreed upon when you move into the standardization phase as we will do for 6G in about two to three years which is when the technical performance requirements of IMT 2030 are gonna take place. Next slide, please. So this is the two by two for future G systems. So we talked about different industries. So we are here looking at different kind of use cases that we feel will be motivated, and again, as you see on the X axis, you’re looking at enterprise and mobility. So the extreme mobility use cases are to the right, more fixed on the enterprise side are on the left, and then you also are moving from the equipment which is the physical infrastructure up to more of the extreme environments and the softwarization elements that will need to be considered. So this is sort of kind of my distillation of the earlier slide that was presented by NICT which showed sort of the stovepiped different kind of industry mappings. Next slide, please. So again, I think the world is programmable. The world is virtual. The architectures are also moving in that direction. 5G has shown us the deployment of 5G, the deployment of virtualized and programmable networks, and we’re gonna hear a lot about open radio access networks and what that brings to the table. This is sort of just our kind of an academic version of how different modular elements in an entire network system, and just to spell it out for everybody, starting from the device to the edge, and the edge could be mobile itself. It could also be stationary or there could be a point cloud at the edge. Then you move into the core network, and then you move into the wide area system where different cores could also be interconnected. And the idea here is both horizontally and vertically on the protocol stack, we need open interfaces where you now have the ability to insert, depending on what quality of service, quality of experience you’re trying to reach, build a bespoke network for every individual. The analogy is that 5G today is building a interstate highway for every consumer which is not sustainable. Now with 6G, we have to be much more adaptive, and all of this is gonna distill back down to the energy point that Tabisa was making which resonates very clearly with us because energy efficiency is gonna be important, not over-provisioning our networks, and then having intelligence built into all the four different elements I talked about from the edge to the transport network to the core network and to the wide area network. Next slide, please. So this is just a kind of notional view. This is where sort of the academic and the industry worlds are sort of merging in. From the top down, and the top is the orchestration piece, you see multiple different interfaces southbound to the infrastructure and to the different network elements that will need to be controlled. So you’re going to need to have lifecycle management, you’re gonna need to have continuous integration and development, as well as the concept of network slicing which is gonna continue, in my opinion, into the era of 6G, which is bespoke, customized network experience, and building the underlying infrastructure and the different network functions that are required to meet whatever needs are gonna be. Next slide, please. So one, just last couple minutes that I have, a kind of a plea to those who are building platforms and sort of our perspective, at least on the US side, is looking for a uniform platform for automation. And this has to be key, because AI is gonna be inserted at each stage and the idea of being fully automated across the infrastructure, across the network functions that run on the infrastructure, and then the workloads that run on those network functions. And those all need to be automated and they need to be adapted to meet the user requirement that’s present there. So in addition to that, you’re also going to have to think about the capacity, you’re going to have to think about the latency, you’re going to have to think about sort of the KPIs that are going to be important for these future platforms as we sort of build the test prototypes over the next 24 months. Next slide, please. So, okay, so this is kind of, again, coming back and shining a light on the orchestrator as again, in this panel we’re focused on. The idea here is from the industry perspective to attract them to have this kind of a global 10,000 foot view where different industries can mix and match together, you can develop different service combinations. The availability is a parameter that’s going to be very, very important. The network needs to be available when you need it for the bits to go from point A to point B. Then there has to be resilience in that network and that will only happen if there is automation and resource optimization, which also touches on the energy efficiency, energy consumption point and the intelligence is very, very important. Security, privacy, the ability to trust the data that was inserted at the source and to make sure that it’s the same data that comes out at the destination and how are you going to make sure that it wasn’t snooped on, it wasn’t eavesdropped and you were able to operate through securely through this commercial network. Industry is going to be very, very astute and keen to make sure that the data that lives on their enterprise or on their cloud is not manipulated at all. Again, trustworthiness of the AI models that we use for each of those infrastructures is going to be very, very key and then the open and interoperable standards that are going to define the next generation of future networks. So with that, I’ll stop here. Thank you for your time and attention.

Moderator:
Thank you very much, Gosai-san. Okay, then a second. Next, Maria-san. Okay, I think this is. Great, thank you. Thank you.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
My name is Maria Matin-Mikko-Blue and I come from the University of Oulu in Finland and there I hold a research director position in Infotech Oulu Focus Institute and I’m also director of sustainability and regulation in our 6G flagship research program. That was the world’s first 6G research program globally started in 2018. Next slide, please. So we started this research already five years ago and from the very beginning, we took a multidisciplinary approach combining technical research together with research on business and also regulations, including contributions to regulation and this needs to be in multistakeholder collaboration. So industry has always been part of our research. You need to do it together to know the requirements, to know the technology developments and really do close collaboration with the different companies, as well as the public sector, including the regulator. And as an example of what we’ve done is we’ve been globally participating in the global 6G definition process at the ITUR called IMT 2030. I don’t have those figures yet in this presentation because they are not agreed. They were supposed to be agreed last week but that didn’t happen, so they are not here. But I want to give you an example of a success story from before. So you know local 5G network, you know private 5G networks. We were talking about them and developing them already in the year 2016 and presenting this idea that 5G spectrum awarding should not only be to the big MNOs, mobile network operators, but also local licensing should be done and everybody was criticizing this, but now it is a reality. So it’s an example of industry academia, regulator collaboration, which was then pushed through different forums of both research industry and regulatory forums. Next slide. So we did this world’s first 6G white paper already four years ago in September 2019 as a collaborative effort with almost 100 people, including Japan and many other countries, industry academia, some regulators were involved and you can download it in the internet. And one of the key things there was that 6G is not only about the communication, transferring of bits, it brings together different capabilities, including sensing, locationing, positioning, and all those things, computing and so on. And that creates a platform which is capable to realize new services that we don’t even know today. So there’ll be a lot of different capabilities brought together by the network, by the devices. The network can sense the environment. It can create very accurate picture of the surrounding environment. In real time, by capturing also the changes there. Next slide. This is also from that same white paper. We had a section about the business ecosystem and it’s an example of this multidisciplinary research, which is my favorite. So we see the world in such a way that it comes from different resource combinations, as we heard previously. So different companies, organizations, individuals, they provide resources to the table. Different users, user group, end users, machines, consumers, public sector companies, they have different needs for the services. They are often location specific, like this conference center has a substantial Wi-Fi network to cater the data in here, for example. Locations, different locations like ports, harbors, traffic hubs, hospitals, they have their very specific needs. And today they are still catered with traditional methods, but more and more location specific needs emerge and also solutions to serve those needs are coming up. They involve different stakeholders. They involve different company combinations to serve those very different needs. The same network can then serve different user group with different service level requirements and so on. And we already see the changing business ecosystem. So these new business ecosystems emerge around these different usages in the different locations. We’re already seeing the changes in what companies are doing with these local 5G networks, which most of the time are private networks serving a closed user group. But they also could be open public networks locally that then serve different customers, for example, MNOs customers and so on. So all these different combinations are possible. They are in different regulatory domains. So there’s a lot of regulatory burden here, but it’s very different in the different countries. But I’ll skip that for this part. Next slide. So the emergence of this large number of local 6G networks is kind of a natural step from what we see today. So we believe that this will happen. It’s not just the mobile network operators who can deploy 5G networks today. For example, Japan, Finland, Germany, US, many countries have made it possible for different stakeholders to apply for a radio permit to operate their own network. It was very rare in 4G era. Very few countries did that in the 4G era, but that is now happening without direct MNO involvement, but MNOs do it too. So there are many different ways to realize these networks, but the divergence between the countries is huge. So the spectrum is the key there. And for example, in Europe, where you can now deploy a private 5G network is very country-specific, different in Finland compared to Germany, but they are studying a common band from 3.8 to 4.2 gigahertz today so that it will be some level of harmonization. And how to realize this? A large number of 6G networks, the access to spectrum is a bottleneck. It’s based on sharing. It’s based on sharing between the local networks, but also most likely of sharing between the local networks and the existing users of the spectrum. We know that spectrum is allocated to a variety of services. Finding spectrum or cleaning the bands is really, really challenging. That’s very challenging for 6G. So gaining access to spectrum through shared access for local networks is definitely something that will happen in the future. There are some papers that we did several years ago on this topic. Then the next slide. Then going to the sustainability and sustainable development. So we know that the UNSTG framework is there. Our nations are committed to achieving that. It looks quite challenging. And if you look at it from the ICT perspective, seven out of the indicators from the 230 indicators are ICT-specific, capturing things like percentage of schools with internet access. So they are not really the design criteria for 6G alone. Of course, they are what’s the minimum that needs to be met. But for 6G, we need to… sustainable development from this triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental perspectives. And that’s what the community is now starting to do or trying to do. But it’s quite challenging because these perspectives are not so well known in our field, ICT field, and they’re very much interrelated. You can solve environmental, social, sustainable challenges if you had all the money in the world, but mobile communication is not, unfortunately, it’s not charity, it’s business. So it all depends on the money and the investment in the networks and the services. The next slide. So in the first white paper from 2019 that was done in a global collaboration, one of the conclusions was that 6G should be driven by sustainability, for example by the UN SDGs. And then we did a follow-up paper, I coordinated that white paper that was published three years ago about connecting 6G with the UN SDGs. You can download both of these white papers from online. And we know this, this is from four and three years ago, but the reality is still not there. The community is still not doing that. We have energy efficiency, that is one indicator. That’s one environmental sustainability related indicator. Even if you improve energy efficiency, but if the total consumption still increases, it’s not enough. So when you talk about energy, you always have to have two indicators, at least two indicators, energy efficiency and energy consumption. Then the total energy consumption, it’s not just the bits and pieces, but what is the total energy consumption. And then optimize the operations, the whole network design, so that we minimize this use of resources. Next slide. So I see this sector’s dual role in sustainable development is something we have to keep in mind all the time. So we can, yes, we can enable a lot of great things in the different sectors of society through making their operations more efficient in an economically feasible manner. This is the enablement effect or the handprint. And a lot of emphasis is now on this, that yes, we help others, so that’s enough. But it’s definitely not enough. So the ICT sector’s own, for example, energy consumption keeps increasing. It’s not decreasing, it’s not stabilizing, it keeps increasing. And that energy is just one part, but other environmental burden, other social burden, the footprint part, we have to really pay attention to that. And luckily, at least the companies are into this now. The research community is doing this right now, but we’re still far away from having the solutions. But one thing we need to do is that we have to have these both roles, not to explain away that our own helping others is enough, so we don’t need to do it. We do need to act and we do need to define together the indicators and the measurement methods and the requirements for the solutions. For example, in Europe, the European regulators were asked about the indicators of environmental sustainability for the ICT sector, what they’re using. Most of them did not use anything. Some countries had some ICT-specific environmental sustainability indicators. So we really are in the starting point of this process. Next slide. Then key stakeholders, we all need to do something. Users want to know what the impact of their choices is. End users, when I talk to the younger generations, they want to know how much energy, how much greenhouse gases, gas emissions of the use of an ICT device and the ICT service creates. And the footprints are different depending on the device connectivity dimensions. So you have put these resources together and it’s quite different depending on which resource combinations you use. But that information is not available. That’s not for the end user to see. It’s not for the regulators to see, so that they could direct towards this development. And here the research community has a lot to give as bringing the unbiased research results in the table. But for that, we need the data from the industry. We need this real-life data. Next step. And the next step. Yes, so for 6G, ICT systems are a powerful measurement tool. They can provide a lot of data about environmental sustainability and social sustainability to solve major challenges. All the resources need to be used as efficiently as possible by optimizing the locations of what is done where. Today the world, like the leading countries in mobile communications, are those that consume most data. And that’s far from being sustainable. So we are leading something because we consume a lot. Well that’s not really sustainable. So we actually need to have a whole new way of looking into what is a forerunner in terms of the ICT sector and mobile communications. So we have to minimize, in the future we need to minimize the data we transfer, or at least minimize the impact, the environmental and social impact that transfer has. That is quite a different design criteria for the future. And our sector is not the only sector dealing with sustainability challenges. A lot of methodological development, a lot of indicator development, key performance, key value indicator development happens in other sectors. And it really requires a multidisciplinary approach and collaboration. Next slide. Then I have an example of spectrum management. It’s my own research topic. So what sustainability means there, and one thing what it means there is through shared access of spectrum you can gain access to spectrum. But it’s not done today. It really, we have the unlicensed band. So if you come up with a major solution, wireless solutions, you can only use the unlicensed band. It’s really hard to gain access to spectrum. For local networks we’re starting to get that now, but we need those sharing-based techniques and also technologies. But it’s also a regulatory challenge, so we need to have those implemented in the regulations. Next. So to conclude, I want you to remember that SICSI is not only about communication service, but it brings together different kinds of capabilities. And it brings pretty powerful platform, but it has to be optimized. So it cannot, if we just do as we did before, the consumption of energy will explode. If we just see the numbers of users increasing and data rates increasing. So we really have to do more efficient solutions. And business ecosystems change. Local 5G networks are already introducing local ecosystems around the different vertical use cases. And the same development will definitely continue. That will open new business opportunities for different kinds of companies to operate. And sustainability, that is a key driver. There are many values. In SICSI, the R&D, we have one value. Countries, we like-minded countries, they have shared values. And sustainability is one of them. And that is an umbrella term. I like to use that as the umbrella, because under that we have a lot of things, including bridging the digital divide. And end-users are forgotten usually in the process. The mobile network operators say that, yes, they bring the end-user perspective into the game, but they’re not really there. The developers aren’t there. So the developers of the solutions and services, the applications, they aren’t there. It’s still primarily dominated by the existing strong players, the infrastructure vendors, the operators who are there. So therefore, it’s time that we consider this whole ecosystem and the stakeholder process, that who are the stakeholders in the 2030s? They may not be the ones that are strong today. How do we include the new voices into this changing ecosystem and business environment, so that the end-users are really, their voices are heard towards sustainable SICSI? Thank you.

Moderator:
Okay, thank you very much, Maria-san. Okay, next one is Tony-san.

Tony Quek:
Okay, I’m Tony. So I’m a faculty at a university, but I’m also serving as a director of the Future Communities of Singapore’s B5G program. I just want to share the perspective from a small country. We started thinking about this about 2019. Our whole purpose at the end is what does it mean for us as Singapore, the economic impact, the social impact, and national resilience. So I just want to share why particularly we look at open RAN at around 2018. Next slide. As I mentioned, so the initial investment is about US$50 million, about Singapore, 68.7 million. The background was, it’s essentially we look at connectivity is going to be a foundation layer for a lot of services, a lot of services beyond 5G. Think about services that are important to Singapore, because aviation is important, maritime is important, a lot of services will be connected. The geopolitical situation is something that we have to keep in mind, especially Singapore is a neutral position, so how will it affect in terms of key technologies? How will it mean to have an ecosystem in Singapore? Investment in leadership role, so that we actually can play a part together with our like-minded partners, so this is some investment that we started. Next slide. So I’ll just skip this slide. So just for the background of some audience, so particularly we look at open RAN because essentially, as what Shih-Zhi Zhang has mentioned, how do we bring in Tier 2, Tier 3 player into the ecosystem? A traditional RAN, if you break it out in the open RAN systems, it’s de-aggregation, there’s multi-module open interfaces, that’s where a lot of emphasis on software, as we decouple the software from hardware, this is where some opportunities will come in, especially for a player like Singapore. Next slide. There’s a few areas that are potential research area. I’ll just pick three, there are a lot more. Next slide. The first slide is on security and trust, not just security only, but you need an infrastructure that will be trustworthy. So some of the security risks we look at, essentially a lot of all these systems will be cloud-native, how would cloud be essentially one security risk? How do you actually manage this? Vendors, if you look at a lot of vendors, security may not be a high priority list, performance reliability will be there, how do you actually complement and help these vendors to actually improve their capability of that? One of the issues with open RAN we see is the complexity, increasing of complexity, especially multi-vendor, the capability of SI is going to be very important, how would they play a role, how do we automate some of this process? Supply chain, especially in software, supply chain risk, different vendors coming in, it’s good that Nara talked about shared spectrum. Essentially once we do shared spectrum across all this open platform system, what is the risk of the disruption of services? This is something that I have to keep in mind during this capability. We look at it as how Singapore will use the role as neutrality, as neutral position to improve security and trust in this ecosystem and contribute. So we play a role in Plugfest, O-RAN Alliance and vendor adoption. Next slide. The next area we want to look at is actually one powerful capability of O-RAN is this transparency that allow us to actually implement intelligence, right, AI, ML across a different controller, the services, the generation of this data, how do you really trust the model, AI, ML for RAN sustainability, this will be the one key feature. Essentially how do you actually test it, how do you actually verify this, how do you actually apply this across the different vertical services, the capability across this. This will be implemented across the orchestration where Xi Jinping has mentioned. How do you benchmark as we have all of all these AI, ML, S apps across the different vendor, is there a common benchmarking, is there something that we mutually recognize. So this is something that a lot of opportunities for us to create vertical services and be needle-moving. The next slide. Sustainability as we have to think about the infrastructure. Singapore has re-announced the carbon tax, we’re going to roll out carbon tax and down the road purely with some timeline. As we implement, whether it’s private network or public network, we really have to think about sustainability. How will all this infra, even open RAN, capture this sustainability where it’s at RU side because RU consume a lot of power. How would all this sustainability, all the different requirements, energy efficiency come into play. So this is where we have to plan way ahead, work with the vendors. It’s a very green field for everyone, so how do we make, be a leader, especially for Asia. I think Asia will have a particular role in sustainability as a service, so it’s something we can leverage and work together. Next slide. So we built, as we in the beginning, we say we need a test bed. Let’s build a test bed, build around all this research area, make sure it’s open, modular, work with our partners, bring the ecosystem to Singapore. So these are some of the features we have, software-defined, reconfigurable. Next slide. So we have this first O-RAN network that’s set up around 2021. Once we sell, we think about what an interesting use case we can work with the vendors and build up capability. We go to the next slide. So one of the, we can move to the next slide, it’s fine. So essentially we started to build a drone arena. The reason why we net it up, because we are very close to the airport. Our university is within five kilometer from Changi Airport, so it’s a no-fly zone. So the way we actually work with the government is that if we net it up, it’s like the Jurong Bird Park if you have been to Singapore, then the drone will not fly out. So they say you can actually fly. So this is where our site, we have a private 5G O-RAN network. We can do a lot of use cases, channel measurements, some of the companies you look at, you look at XR drone racing. So this is where some of the use cases and metaverse could come in. How would 3D network essentially play a role in this setup? It’s a small test bed for us to look at. Next slide. Because we are looking at cyber-physical concepts, so we are looking at as a campus, it could be a factory, but as a university we have a campus, so we’re thinking about how in the future you incorporate the cyber and physical, because COVID pandemic has forced us to really think about cyber world. How would the virtual campus, virtual work experience change down the decade? How would connectivity change the way we work? So we were trying to understand is there a new way of communication as we bring in all this capability to the campus, and also work with the faculty and students trying to understand this extended AR personalized learning. Then once we understand this and build a capability, you can actually branch out to other sector. Next slide. Metaverse has been talked a lot, so we’re thinking about what is the connectivity requires for this, because web 3 is going to be a big impact across the different services. Particularly Singapore, we actually have a very consensus there. How would it change the consumer market? How will it change the enterprise market? How will it change even the way different enterprise, different companies collaborate, transact and communicate? Then how would connectivity play a role in this whole ballgame? Census coming in, so this is a sort of a playground that we work with, closely with the different partners, whether it’s a platform and also with the telco. Next slide. So some of the plans that we have currently with setting up or explain setting up OTIC to do measurement, to do testing, multi-vendor network, coordination of mmWave 3.5. We have mmWave band allocated to the telco. Unfortunately telco have not deployed essentially. Trying to understand even the service model, or is it possible to deploy an O-RAN type of mmWave together with a conventional network is something we work with them. The use of digital twin, we’re also trying to expand our testbed to include NTN. NTN is going to make a big difference, a lot of services etc around ASEAN, so it’s something we are looking at and trial technology. Next slide. So one concept was, just skip this, I mentioned about OTIC. We can skip this slide. I mentioned about this O-RAN, the relationship O-RAN and NTN, because down the road a lot of the satellite, especially from transparent type of a mode, when they move to a regenerative satellite, one of the opportunities that regenerative satellite has opportunities to apply concept of O-RAN, whether it’s the CUDU is there or different architecture. So once that comes in, there’s opportunities for even ecosystems trying to do testing around this sort of OTIC with NTN capability. So this is what we wanted to do to prepare for the next phase when NTN is going to be very big around particular Asia and ASEAN. Next slide. So this concept that we wanted to push beyond the cyber physical campus is that we have invest so much, since sustainability is a key, so how do we leverage our investment together with like-minded partners. So we had first connection with the 5G, 6G innovation center, University of Surrey. So we’re looking at with this, of course it’s a VPN, VPN and also the academic network. How do we actually work on sharing resources, sharing testing, sharing measurement and also data. How do we actually apply some of this federated model. How do we think about language distributed language model. So this is something we are looking at. Another thing we’re exploring is industry lab. So industry lab may not necessarily always have to be co-located physically with us. So how do we leverage on their lab and have access or remote access to it and how do we explore the different models. So this is something we are working with, thinking about other optics that could be one, different models. This is something we, I think it makes sense because if we talk about sustainability, it’s always good to for leverage on the different investments across different countries and different companies so that we have a common purpose and to share. So this is what we want to push from a Singapore side. Next slide. I think and thank you. Thank you very much

Moderator:
Tony-san. Okay, thank you for the panelist for the position talks. Okay, so actually I have prepared some questions for the discussions. So could you show the questions? Okay. Okay, so I have came up with some discussion points and I would like to start with these questions. First I, maybe you have already mentioned something about this, but I would like to ask again about expectations to the beyond 5G, 6G, so what are expected changes to networking systems in the 2030s where 5G, 6G is fully utilized? What are expected changes? So I would like to maybe go sign some first. Sure.

Abhimanyu Gosain:
I get the easy question here. So it’s artificial intelligence and machine learning, right? So that’s sort of the low-hanging fruit. I think we’re already starting to see some of the emergence and the dependence or kind of the forward integration of artificial intelligence moving from the compute side, the large language models, et cetera, that is happening now moving into the network side, the transport, as you’d call it. And then we’re going to see that more natively on the air interface side. So from the spectrum sharing thing that you heard was a common theme across all panelists, the idea that you have smart software-defined radios that have the intelligence already built in, you now have much finer-grained resolution on how you could control the spectrum voxels that are available. So again, being a little bit technical, the physical resource blocks on the spectrum in the time and frequency domain, how they could be shared, how they could be divided, and then how does the radio interface sense and communicate on the same channel, and how are those policies and how is that decentralized so you don’t necessarily have a central authority? Obviously, that adds a regulatory headache in terms of how these systems are, first of all, understood. So how is the AI explainable? And then how do you essentially make sure that these network systems are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing? Thank you very much. Okay. So who would you like to answer next? Okay. So, Tabitha-san. Thanks very much.

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi:
I think for me, it’s something that I touched on a bit in my presentation. I think the most important thing for us is around the interoperability, so the spectrum sharing, the ability to leverage the resources, expand the resources quite extensively, and ensure that the spectrum is not only just for those who can afford it, especially if you use a process such as the one South Africa did around auctioning. It’s about the deepest pockets, and therefore you inevitably just leave out the small players who actually bring the innovation, who bring the diversity in the market. So for us, the expectations that we expect to see in these networking systems is around the diversity in the market participation with the small players. And then the other point was around the localization of the data, or the localization of the systems, the ability for the systems to address the context in which it’s working. And that speaks to having the access to the global knowledge system, but also being able to develop our own local knowledge systems, especially as the developing nations. Thank you very much.

Moderator:
Okay, Maria-san. It combines the communication service with the other capabilities, sensing, locating, emitting, computing. Those come together in SIGCHI. That’s one of the changes that we are seeing, that I was talking about. Maybe I’ll add just a perspective.

Tony Quek:
So with all these technologies, I think at the end, we have to convince our people, that means our government agencies, that it actually can generate social impact and economic impact. We have to ensure that with all these new technologies, networking technologies coming in, especially for Singapore, there are certain sectors we are still ahead. So this is important, whether it’s open platform or intelligence platform, how we would actually change our position, how do we stay ahead, and how we fully utilize all these different technologies. So this is one of the key basis of which technology or which investment we put in. Thank you very much. Okay, so to summarize, I get your comments. So beyond 5G, 6G, you are going to have more detailed, advanced management of the spectrum sharing, for example, by explainable AI. Also, if we have more interoperable scheme, we can expect much more proper market, and also maybe change the position of business, this kind of thing. So if you have some questions from before, please.

Moderator:
Okay, so until waiting for the questions. Okay, so to realize these things, what do you think about, for example, regulations? Maybe we need to think about regulations. And yes, of course, regulation is necessary to be changed, but how should we think about this? We need to change a lot, actually. So in my mind, it’s very, very difficult compared with the things that we have done for this 20, 30 years. Maybe we need a very big change in the regulations. So what do you think about this? Maria-san, maybe first?

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
The spectrum part is definitely one, and we already see the divergence there. Countries are assigning different bands for local 5G. It leads to fragmentation, because the whole mobile communication is based on using the same equipment globally. My phone works here. So that was the whole point of IMD systems. So the same should continue in the future. So we have to have harmonized. And it’s a challenge, because countries decide themselves how to do things. And the private networks operate under different regulations than the public ones. The public networks have a certain set of rules that they have to follow. But they also have some kind of benefits that they then get from this status. And even this is very different in Europe, in Asia, in US. So it’s very, very complicated. And then the same pieces of equipment should work everywhere. I don’t end with the role of the regulator. So maybe I pass the mic there.

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi:
I think you touched on a very important aspect, Maria, which is around harmonization. And being very intentional around harmonization and standardization of equipment. So one thing that the developing nations, at least in the African context, are good at is really participating in the international debates and discussions. So the WRC, the PP that happened last year, the ITU Council, et cetera. However, anyone who’s attended those sessions knows that it really is around the loudest voice in the room and the lobbying thereof. And so if we don’t keep the development imperatives, the global development imperatives in mind, we then lose sight of what it is that we’re trying to achieve. And therefore, we get the lack of interoperability, the lack of harmonization, et cetera, the fragmented spectrum use, et cetera. So I think that is very important in that impressing upon global regulatory bodies around the fact that harmonization is important for sustainability. And it’s important for accessibility in terms of cost and inclusion. The other aspect around the regulator’s role and what you say you don’t envy, which is now my daily job, it really, I think, for me, is around dismantling regulation as we’ve known it. And once again, let me add the disclaimer that you added. These are my personal views and not the views of South Africa. But I really believe that we need to dismantle regulation as we know it, because what we were previously, and some countries still are in the sub-Saharan region, regulating for has become obsolete. We cannot, we no longer talk about the typical regulatory tools that we used to have, you know, what was it, call termination and all those things. They don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter anymore, because, you know, we’re seeing that what regulators are starting to do is to become more digital and technical type of regulators. And the mandate is now more around research than it is around, you know, regulating the sector. So they are setting the standard. They are setting the bar. They are the ones determining how things should be done. And so that’s how I view the change in the regulator. And with that, it will bring the agility that’s required to keep up. Thank you very much.

Moderator:
Gosani-san, if you have something. Yeah, just to add, right, so you can only regulate something that you understand, right? So first you have to have a baseline of what is, and when we talk about scary things like AI and generative AI right now, obviously it’s sitting in a different domain, but it’s going to creep up into the networking domain as well. So how are decisions essentially made? So a regulator’s job is sort of learning on the fly and learning as things go along. And that’s why, to tie this back to the panel discussion, that’s why the platform, a neutral platform that has somewhat of a mirroring of what’s happening out in the broader deployment piece. So if you can’t measure it, if you can’t understand what is actually going on, what the operators are telling you, what are other private deployments doing, how is Spectrum being used, how are networks being used, how is data being managed, how are things being firewall protected, etc. So I think you’re essentially just reacting if you’re not in lockstep with where sort of the networks of the future are going to be. Okay, so Tony-san, my image of Singapore is you are very flexible about regulations, so what do you think about that?

Tony Quek:
Actually, Spectrum is a bit sensitive because we have neighbours, so anything goes to the neighbours is always not good. So I think the experience what we did together with IMDA, which is equal FCC to do this future comms is you try to look at whether it works, and see whether you can build an ecosystem which you believe will convince us. Then slowly we bring in the telco. It took us two years to convince the telco, why don’t we try something, because the telco says I’m really locked down by the conventional vendor, why should I try to explore? So I think we see a new business model of this sandbox concept. That’s what Kosen has mentioned. A sandbox, but the sandbox needs to be realistic, cannot be too academic. There needs to be industry, academy, there needs to be vendor inside. Once you break that ecosystem, then you actually can convince a policymaker to change a bit and try. So this is what we have been trying to do. Likewise, new technologies like NTN, something we really need to think about, because same thing, with this Spectrum, the neighbours, it propagates across so many people. What were the implications?

Moderator:
I think a sandbox is really important as we want to try out.

Tony Quek:
Then, of course, a new business model could come in. Okay, thank you very much. Any questions or comments? Please. My name is Norifumi Yamaguchi from NICT. I have two questions for the panellists. Thank you very much for today’s very fruitful and very informative session.

Audience:
One question is, I’m wondering, everyone talk about the Spectrum harmonisation, and Dr Marie-Méconneau-Ambroux has mentioned some difference of Spectrum between Finland and Germany, so it might be harmonised. And also, Ms Faye Mwangi has mentioned that some fragmentation of the Spectrum, which might be some disadvantage or some problem in the future. On the other hand, Mr Angus Stein has mentioned that this can be solved with the development of technology. Some software technology might give some integration of such a fragmentation of the Spectrum. And so, I’m wondering how they can solve this Spectrum harmonisation all over the world. I would like to do some opinion, observation of that. The second thing is the number of standards in the 6G, because we are now standards developing from the 1G to 2G, 3G. In this time, we just have a few standards, but in the 4G and 5G, we have some several standards, because each requirement has, you know, each country has proposed different standards according to their requirement. That’s why they need some standards for the competition, the view of the competition. But on the other hand, we might need not so many standards because of the mass production over for the manufacturing point of view. So, I’m wondering how many standards will be required, most ideal for the development of the 6G. Thank you very much.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
Thank you very much. Fubu-Tanaka, OK. Maria-San. I can start answering my view on both questions. The Spectrum part is a challenge. We already now see, when we’re starting to talk about 6G spectrum, the views are so divergent. Europe already is saying something that many countries don’t want any spectrum for 6G, and that is the big challenge that we face in Europe, how to make, convince that there is the need and then what those bands are. So, it’s a debate which will happen in the coming years, and we all need to be willing to bring the facts on the table, not just opinion or wishes, but the pure facts that we know. So, then I’ll already jump to the next one, that the standards part. So, 5G has maybe two standards. There’s the 3GPP standards, which is the dominant one, and then there is the ECDEC standard, a smaller one where smaller players came together in the European Telecom Standards Institute and proposed it to the ITU process, and it was approved there. Also, other proposals have been received to the global ITU process. So, those two exist. They say both networks are being sold, but we know mainly the 3GPP. That’s where the big players are. That’s where the big companies are. They create those standards, and the IP games are played in that standards arena. Those players who are within 3GPP, they say that they want just one 6G standard, which is their 3GPP standard. Nothing stops other organizations or standards parties to propose 6G standards to the ITU process once the requirements are defined. Personally, I think there might be more proposals, just one. In 5G, there were several proposals. In 3G, there were several accepted proposals. So, one definitely will be, but that one should not stop others. There’s room for many kinds of deployments.

Moderator:
Thank you very much. Who would like to answer more?

Abhimanyu Gosain:
Sure. So, on the spectrum side, basically, I think, well, like it or not, WRC that’s coming up in a month, month and a half, each member state, each country is going in with a position that’s been defined. So, there will be some harmonization. There will be some agreement. And again, as you know, the WRC cycle that will go out for the next four years or the next eight years, that agenda will also be set in November. So, unfortunately, the spectrum story has to be very carefully constructed. I think with 6G, you’re seeing the entrance of new players like the SATCOM, the NTN, the non-terrestrial networks, they’ll be included in there. So, how do you sort of harmonize it now when you add a third dimension? So, not just terrestrial, but non-terrestrial elements on the spectrum piece as well. So, yeah, not necessarily painting a very rosy picture on the spectrum front because that is such, needs to be very carefully coordinated. On the standards front, I think, yeah, as Maria sort of very nicely sort of pointed out, that is the 3GPP dominance. And I think, you know, there has been this debate about whether 6G will be an evolution or a revolution, right? So, the 3GPP standard will continue to be an evolution. That’s a juggernaut. It is, again, as, you know, she alluded to on the IP side, you know, the game is all about SEPs, the standard essential patents. And that’s where a huge amount of, you know, economic activity is generated. So, that part is not going to stop. That behemoth is going to go. The release cycle, so right now in the 3GPP realm, we are at release, you know, 17 was approved in June earlier this year. 18, 19 study items have been defined. And the 3GPP cycle says that, you know, somewhere around the release, you know, 21 time frame, you’re going to come up with the moniker 6G. Right now in 3GPP, we’re already past 5G. We are in 5G advanced. So, we’re already moving. But the other part is standards are also, if you really dissect a network, there are lots of different standardization bodies. There is IETF that talks about the transport piece. There are entities that ISO that talks about security. Then there’s 3GPP. So, you have to be very careful around how all of that is stacked. But if you just look at the wireless comms, the wireless communication side, yes, there are member states in different countries that have already made their commitments and announcements. They’ve all developed their own public-private partnerships, their alliances that are promoting what standard it has to be. And there has always been this struggle between the developing world where the cost of the devices is the key issue. And that is the key issue for adoption, because if there is a device cost that has a component or a chipset, where do you need to pay a royalty of hundreds of dollars that drives up the device cost. And that’s going to drive down or slow the adoption. So that is a key element that the developing world has to really think. And I think that’s one of the motivating factors outside of lots of other factors, terrain, population density, et cetera, et cetera, that need to be considered as well. OK, thank you very much.

Moderator:
Look, I need to think about the time, actually. So may I move on to the next one? OK, so I would like to discuss a business issue. So what is the new business model or ecosystem to be created by Beyond 5G, 6G? What type of disruptive progress is expected in the future business along with a shift to Beyond 5G, 6G? So if you have any opinion, Maria-san, I think you have.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
I have opinions. They are my personal opinions. But there are many types of businesses to consider here. One is the mobile communications connectivity business, what the mobile network operators offer. So that’s one part of the game. Another part is then the ecosystems that emerge around the different usages of the networks, like the local networks, harbor areas, hospitals, and so on. So those will have their own ecosystems. And then the business model is the logic that what is the value offering, what is being offered, who buys it. And it now is shifting from a company level to the ecosystem level. So we are starting to think about ecosystem level business model. So for this kind of usage, who are the stakeholders there who need to be in place? One company, it rarely involves just one organization, but multiple organizations. And they all need to get something for that. It should not be based on one, like the winner takes it all. But there should be some kind of balanced role that they all can support their businesses. Going back to this mobile connectivity business, we’ve seen changes in terms of, for example, the number of operators per country. Most countries started with one operator, the governmental operator, then gradually making that the liberalization, introducing the second one, and then the third one, and so on. And it went to the point that in many, especially European countries, there were like five, six operators. And there were auctions. The treaty brought the spectrum auctions. Crazy amounts of money were bid on spectrum. And it led to a lot of many operators suffering. And then they started buying each other. So the third and fourth merged in the list. So that happened. So now there’s a smaller number of MNOs in each country than there was in the hype time. They continue. Now they’re quite well-established. They claim they don’t have money. Well, some of them don’t have. But in Finland, they all make good revenue. They make good profit. Well, they haven’t paid much for the spectrum that has helped them. But anyway, they’ve made good money. So that business continues. They still have licenses for long future to come. So that business is there. What the revenues are in the future, they still get that money, monthly subscriptions. 5G is still based on monthly subscription fees as 4G was, as 3G was. So it’s the same building models still are there. So this continues to continue, at least for the future. And that continues. Then what 6G comes brings us a new thing for the business. That is unknown. That’s the unknown part where we need to look into what kind of new businesses could come. But one thing is that they will emerge around those different usages. And then who pays for what? You get connectivity for free. So you don’t necessarily pay for that so much. But still, if you get something great with that, you do pay for that, in addition to the service subscriptions that you have. Thank you very much.

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi:
OK, so you have? I think what we’ve started seeing with 5G in South Africa is seeing the use or the monetization of what we would term in universal access and service the true access gap. So seeing small, medium enterprises starting to start to get some economic value out of that true access gap. And the way that they’ve done that is by tapping into the network, but also leveraging the obligations that came with the spectrum auction. So we’re starting to see new business models where the base stations are set up in schools. So we are addressing those development imperatives. But then the networks serve the greater community. And really, the models are not to make the obscene profits that we see in bigger companies, but rather to be able to sustain the development of another similar Wi-Fi project. So we’ve started to see that. And South Africa, in particular, and I think another nation that has a similar topography is Rwanda. But we have a vast amount of space to cover, and really high mountains and low valleys. And so having to get to coverages, and then we have a lot of rural spaces where there isn’t a lot of economic participation. So covering that becomes extremely expensive. And these community networks have really bridged that gap. And they’re slowly changing what we understood to be the business model in the sector, and really coming in with economic participation in what we can, I don’t think we can for much longer, call a true access gap anymore. So maybe we share one of what we are trying to do. So we’re trying to change the mindset of the telco.

Tony Quek:
So we’re trying to tell them that the subscription model is not going to work down the decade, because with all this infrastructure, it’s going to be more expensive. So the process we are trying to force them, open platform, open rail, is force them to build the capability of a S-line, for example, what Docomo is trying to do, so that eventually the market has to be outside Asia, outside Singapore. In particular, we’re looking at Indonesia, which is so close to us. Indonesia is one market, Thailand, Vietnam. So we hope that this could build a new business model for them, so that they will start to think out as an S-line. So this is probably a new business model, but it’s always very difficult to change the telco, because they are so used to get subscription. So this is something that we are trying to do from a government perspective, and agents, and national program. OK, thank you very much.

Moderator:
Actually, I have also questions, but it’s better to go next. OK, number three, collaborations. What are key items for international collaborations to realize the Beyond 5G, 6G as open platform, open service platform? What will be the international collaboration, if you have any questions, comments?

Abhimanyu Gosain:
Yeah, so again, I think first things first for international collaboration, you need a champion. You need a public-private partnership, or a key stakeholder that actually is going to be representative, or present somewhat of a unified opinion, or a unified viewpoint. So after you’ve had a kind of a national position, then you’re able to sort of communicate. And the other thing is, communication has to happen between government to government, industry to industry, and then at the research level, between academics and researchers. Obviously, at the government level, it is very sensitive, joint ministerial statements, et cetera, different politics that are at play. So the idea is, at least at this formative stage, when the next generation is still about 8, 10 years down the line, you do want industry academia to jump ahead. And we are already seeing that in the marketplace. So in the US, you already have the NextG Alliance, where a large number of major vendors and operators are at play. We have lots of different alliances, including here in Japan, the Beyond 5G Promotion Consortia, which is mobile network operators and vendors that have gotten together. Same in Korea, Bharat 6G in India, South America sort of catching up, Singapore, et cetera. So we’re seeing that as kind of the first piece. But then at the real collaboration level, unless we have mobility, and unless we have the ability to sort of get a peek into where the core competencies lie for each region, and we have our strengths, right? So everybody plays to their strengths. But the idea is, how do you do this in a complementary fashion, so that you have the ability to sort of learn from the best, and the sum is greater than the sum of its parts, right? So one plus one is greater than two. And that’s sort of why we are even talking

Moderator:
about collaboration in the first place. Thank you very much. Any other comments? So I agree with Gautam, so at the national level, there’s always this initiative at top and bottom spot.

Tony Quek:
So our approach is actually there’s two way. There’s of course the academia, the professors and universities, which want to do a research which is a very long term strategy. At the same time, we are trying to also focus on short terms in a sense that we have targets like Plugfest, like MWC, like key events that we can actually show impact together to showcase some capability, and this is something we are trying to do together with partners. What we worry, especially if we focus too much on the research part, sometimes the translation takes a bit long, and some government stakeholders may be quite impatient, so we try to have a balance between them, but at the end, I think it goes back to the partners need to have a common goal that can complement three. It’s all about collaboration so that one plus one is equal to three. If you have this mindset, then I think it’s always good because it’s more sustainable than to work alone. As was mentioned, this collaboration is very different depending on the level of collaboration of the stakeholders, so the government’s collaboration is different from the researcher level collaboration.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
The key thing that is first needed is the funding for the research, and the research is done both in the academic side, but also in the industry, and now I think we’re in a pretty good situation in that sense that many countries have programs for this. The European Union has a program for this, and many, many countries have their own ones, and then there are these like-minded countries are already making joint statements about this, like the EU and the US Trade and Technology Council has made this 6G outlook in Luleå in May this year. It defines the key principles, and now that they are out there, it’s then the role of the researchers and the industry to take those principles, and I’ve seen very little discussion on how these are then adopted into the work that we actually do, and this is the missing link. There was no such thing in 5G. That was not there. It is there in 6G, so now the community needs to take these principles, like sustainability, like inclusiveness, and trust. They have to be translated into the work that we do now. It’s a new thing, and it requires a change of mindset from the community to really respect what the higher-level governments agree on, and then do that in the research, and that’s a challenge that I want to bring up. Thank you very much.

Moderator:
Any further comments, or any questions from the floor? No? OK. Looks like, gradually, we need to close the session. OK. So we’d like to have a short message from you, the final message, actually, from each of the panelists, so who would like to give first the last message from you regarding this topic, the open service platform in beyond the 5G, 6G era? OK. Yes? OK, I can go first.

Tony Quek:
I think I thank you for the organizer, NICT, for inviting us. I think we have personally attended a lot of these panels and all this workshop, but I hope that there is outcome after this. We hope that eventually, through this, we can have different stakeholders on the continent and have some eventual outcome down the road that because of this event today, we achieved something. This is what I hope that we can do, then that something can bring back good memories. I hope this is my last message.

Marja Anneli Matinmikko-Blue:
Thank you. Thank you. Maria-san? Then I’ll continue with these roles of the stakeholders, understanding what we are here for. I come from the academic research community. I’m here to help the people. So who are the users of the 6G networks? What do they really want? We have to ask. We can’t ask them directly what they want because it’s not the way it goes, but we have to be honest and take their perspectives into account. We saw in Europe, in 5G, that consumers were disappointed in terms of what they were promised, like oversized promises were made. Then what they were offered by the operators was pretty much similar things as in 4G. Contracts were the same. Data rates were not higher than in 4G when it was launched. So we cannot do this again. Social scientists say that this has already changed the end users’ perspectives. We can’t do this again because they expect. So we cannot make oversized promises anymore. We can’t do them for 5G. We cannot do them for 6G. So we have to stop talking about it’ll be a huge data rate or so, and if we can’t deliver that. So we have to now come back to this. The time for this oversized promises is over, but now we have to seriously think what the future would look like and what is the desired future that the people really want. I’ll continue with the theme, just put it in my own words.

Abhimanyu Gosain:
So the mentality of build it and they’ll come is not something that has served us well. As you see, we’re still searching for the killer app for 5G to sort of make it or to justify it, but we’re still already on the journey to 6G. But I guess the key piece is, again, the platform model, what that allows you is to connect two disparate groups who otherwise would not engage. That’s sort of what, if you really look at, that’s what the platform model is planning to do, and that’s what we sort of believe in. That’s why we’re here. That’s why sort of NICT is also trying to play a role in that piece is connecting these disparate stakeholders who haven’t been at the forefront. So my sort of key takeaway is two C words, co-development and collaboration. And I think co-development, again, a little bit more technical, not just cross-layer optimization, for example, that’s a very technical concept, but essentially we’re looking at different layers and different stakeholders, and then sort of bringing them all to the table at the formative stage, and not necessarily when the decisions have been made, when the standards have been made, but the spectrum’s been allocated, we’re not gonna serve anybody well. And again, we have to think as citizens as well.

Thabisa Zimbini Faye-Mwangi:
Thank you very much. I think without repeating what has already been said, I think my parting words would really be about not forgetting the developing South, bring them along on the journey. One of the biggest things that, if you ever hear the resistance from the developing South about 6G, it’s mainly around the energy impact. I think if we are moving into 6G without solving for the energy, without solving for the energy sustainability and the energy demands that come with it, then for us, it really is 5G plus. There really is no difference. So let’s solve for the sustainability, let’s bring the developing South along because they unlock great, great potential. When they participate, it elevates the whole notion of what we’re trying to do. So we cannot leave behind that many people. And the other thing is around collaboration. It’s so important that we allow the developing South to leverage the progress that’s been made by other countries. So having more sessions like this, having visiting tours, having benchmarking tours and so on, that is what shapes the policy and the regulation of these developing nations. Then the catching up is very little. It becomes just the fundamentals of infrastructure. But when you have the right mindset, you’re then able to have the people to influence the policy and drive the regulatory direction. Thanks.

Moderator:
Okay, thank you very much. Okay, I need to conclude. Okay, thank you very much for your information and opinion and answer. Actually, I personally believe this topic is very, very important for the future. So I’m really happy to share this opinion today. Okay, so fortunately we have actually some years until 2030s, but already we have only six years. So we have to seriously think about this. So I would like to continue this discussion with other stakeholders. So let’s keep in touch. Thank you very much. Okay, now it’s time to return my microphone to Hosako-san. Okay, thank you very much for the fruitful discussion. I think that already Shizu-san summarized our discussion today, but I personally would like to thank to all the panelists come to here and have a very interesting presentations. And after that, they are talking very interesting opinions. But there are many, many different kind of perspectives from the different nations and the different areas and the different positions. But it is quite useful to recognize we have such kind of differences each other. But as already everyone mentioned that we have a chance to recognize and chance to have a collaborative research together for the future network. And also we would like to continue to collaborating each other. So this is the starting point for the future cooperation today. And we would like to keep in touch with in the future. Thank you very much for your attendance and the presentations and also our collaborations together. Thank you very much. Thank you for this session and thank you everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all.