2024 as the First Year of 6G: How SoftBank Corp. is Getting Ready for a New Era

Following full-fledged commercial rollouts around the world, 5G brought ultra-high speeds, ultra-low latency and massive simultaneous connections to the masses. 6G is expected to bring even more wireless communication advancements and innovations while improving reliability and energy efficiency.

At SoftBank Corp.'s (TOKYO: 9434) 38th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders held on June 20, 2024, President & CEO Junichi Miyakawa updated investors on what SoftBank is doing to ready its telecommunications infrastructure for the 6G era. He noted that 2024 is now widely considered to be the first year of 6G, citing the launch of an official 6G logo in April and progress on discussions about 6G specifications at 3GPP, the mobile communication technology standards organization.

He outlined SoftBank's initiatives with regard to three additional technological elements that will be central to 6G:

1. Integration of Telecommunication and AI
2. Integration of Telecommunication and Sensing
3. Ubiquitous Connectivity

With regard to integrating telecommunication and AI, Miyakawa said SoftBank is making progress on researching and developing AI-RAN - which integrates AI into radio access networks (RAN) - with the establishment of a laboratory together with NVIDIA at NVIDIA headquarters in Santa Clara, California. AI-RAN will enable AI-powered applications at the "edge" of mobile networks (known as Multi-access Edge Computing, or MEC), achieving low-latency communications by processing AI data close to devices.

Miyakawa noted that SoftBank is already conducting demonstrations at its Takeshiba headquarters for applications that integrate telecommunication and sensing. He said the demonstrations are using radio waves to measure things like congestion, and by not using surveillance cameras, the sensing method protects people's privacy.

Turning to the third additional element, ubiquitous connectivity, Miyakawa stressed that SoftBank has been an industry leader in this space since 2017 with the development of High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) stratospheric-based wireless communication systems, and that it is promoting HAPS and other Non-terrestrial Network (NTN) initiatives to bridge the digital divide in the 6G era. SoftBank holds the highest number of US patents for HAPS communications, with 77 granted as of June 2024, he added.

SoftBank's Research Institute of Advanced Technology is actively engaged in the research and development of these and other technologies to realize 6G. Lean more in this deep dive.

(Posted on July 5, 2024)
by SoftBank News Editors