Verizon announced the creation of the Verizon 6G Innovation Forum, a partnership between multiple companies to help create the future of wireless in the US. Created to move beyond the theoretical, companies like Samsung, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Meta are being tasked with establishing what the 6G landscape will look like.

Verizon laid out key areas of focus for the 6G forum, detailing that it will be testing new spectrum bands, ensure interoperability across the industry, and allow forum partners to test and refine 6G technologies in real-world environments via new Verizon 6G Labs. The first of these labs will pop up in Los Angeles, CA.

Verizon’s future-forward initiative is uniting key players across the technology ecosystem, including leading network vendors Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, and Nokia; and device and chipset innovators Meta, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., in the early stages of development to define 6G together by identifying potential new use cases, devices and network technology. The forum aims to establish an open, diversified, and resilient 6G ecosystem and develop foundational 6G technologies while ensuring global alignment.

Areas of focus for the 6G forum:

• Unlocking the full potential of 6G by testing new spectrum bands and bandwidths.
• Fostering a globally harmonized 6G landscape by actively working with global standards bodies like 3GPP to ensure that the forum’s work aligns with mainstream 6G development and promotes interoperability across the industry.
• Allowing forum partners to test and refine 6G technologies in a real-world environment by establishing dedicated Verizon 6G Labs, starting in Los Angeles, to serve as hubs for collaborative research, prototyping, and early lab and field trials.

A lot has to take place before we see 6G’s launch, currently expected somewhere around 2030 to 2032. There has to be standardization, years of research and development, actual demand from the market to allow companies the ability to invest in it, and maybe the big one for a country like the US, infrastructure.

Like we saw with 5G, it wasn’t a flip of the switch and everybody had access. The US is huge and it took a long time for actual 5G technology to make its way to everyone. Even still, you can’t find 5G everywhere in the continental US.

From now on, I’m calling this forum the 6G Super Friends.

// Verizon