WILMINGTON, Del. -- As the world welcomes commercial 5G rollouts and the many resulting benefits, industry has begun to earnestly explore the next generation of wireless, 6G. A new report by ABI Research, 6GWorld, and InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDCC) titled “6G: The Network of Technology Convergence” outlines the key attributes of the 6G vision, its foundational and enabling technologies, and the potential it will deliver to industries and economies alike.

Unlike 5G and previous generations of wireless technologies aimed at driving network performance towards higher bandwidth, lower latency, and greater reliability, 6G is envisioned as an enabling platform for new innovations in computing, AI, connectivity, sensors, virtualization, and more. 6G is designed to meet higher requirements of global coverage, greater spectral efficiency, lower carbon footprint and more, and the report suggests that our existing paradigms must blend to ensure end-to-end service delivery of new use cases in 6G.

The report identifies the three types of technology convergences emergent in the 6G vision. First, the paper explores the convergence of communications and computing known as 6G native intelligence, where AI and computing are integral parts to system architecture. Next, it details the telecommunications convergence by which 6G becomes a network of networks for access technologies to enable seamless information flows between individuals, devices, and infrastructures. The third convergence is described as the unique mix between virtual and physical spaces as we move towards 6G-enabled ecosystems like the metaverse.

To achieve this vision, 6G is being developed to create a foundation for computing, AI, and network technologies to seamlessly blend and together structurally change the design of mobile infrastructure.

“Each generation of wireless has fundamentally enhanced our ability to communicate, but 6G will revolutionize how consumers, networks, and devices communicate with and amongst each other,” said Henry Tirri, CTO, at InterDigital. “6G promises to build critical bridges between physical and virtual spaces to enable new use cases while optimizing industry operations, and we continue to be deeply involved in this critical research and road mapping.”

“When we think about 6G as a network of convergences, it is the natural end-point of a variety of existing trends within telecoms, computing and more,” said Alex Lawrence, Managing Editor at 6GWorld. “Each of those trends taken alone is making ripples across the telecoms industry and beyond; the interplay between them will set off second-order and third-order effects on business and society that we can barely start to imagine today.”

The paper also elaborates upon new use cases and potential market opportunities for 6G, including the metaverse, avatar communications, sensor networks, and digital twins.

Read the complete white paper, “6G: The Network of Technology Convergence,” here.