Five things to think about when planning for 6G

The next generation of mobile technology, or 6G, is projected to arrive in around 2030, but work is already underway on standards, technologies and more. As noted by standards body 3GPP in December 2023, delivery of a new mobile generation is a multi-year process, and work on 6G specifications is being planned well in advance.

For operators and vendors, a pressing issue is to ensure that employees have the requisite skills to implement, deploy and market 6G services, whatever these services turn out to be. Indeed, operators are already more than aware that they need to upskill and reskill existing employees in areas such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, software development, data science and IT in order to keep pace with the rapidly changing technology landscape.

In a recent webinar hosted by 6GWorld, a group of mobile technology experts provided some food for thought about how the telecoms industry could help prepare themselves and their workforces to meet future demands. Broader skills and talent challenges facing the technology industry topped the list.

1: Attract students and keep them interested for the longer term

Tim Brown is a senior lecturer on RF antennas and propagation at the University of Surrey in England. He spoke of the importance of training young graduates as well as seasoned engineers, noting that skills in security, communications and AI “will absolutely need to come together.”

Brown said one of the biggest challenges is to ensure that the needs of employers are aligned with courses and internships that are going to attract students and keep them interested over the longer term.

“There’s a balance there between the employer need and what actually excites these would-be students,” he commented, noting that it can also be useful to add buzzwords to course names, such as “space,” AI, and machine learning, while also providing students with employment opportunities at an early stage.

2: Keep the talent pipeline full

Bradley Mead, head of network managed services at Ericsson, said the rate of change in terms of how networks are run is going to increase in the next two years, and “making sure the talent is ready for that is the biggest challenge we have, and we’re investing heavily in that.”

At the same time, people will keep moving on, “so in parallel, we need to focus on how do we make sure the talent pipeline is full with the right talent, right diversity … to meet those demands as well. So we’ve got to do both things at the same time: focus on the existing talent and make sure they’re ready, as well as bringing in the new talent, making sure that we’ve got enough coming in to match the demand profile,” Mead said.

Piotr Pietrzyk, CEO and founder of 6G Academy, also observed how people are increasingly becoming experts in multiple areas, rather than having a single area of expertise.

While the typical T-shaped professional will have broad expertise and one field of deep expertise, he noted, M-shaped professionals will have numerous deep areas of expertise, enabling them to be reskilled or upskilled to the different domains.

3: Soft skills are important

Tom Coughlin, 2024 president and CEO at IEEE, said that soft skills applied to technological areas are important, in addition to knowing the capabilities themselves. “And that’s also the way in which I think we can better learn from each other,” he said.

“The kind of people that often end up going into these fields, we tend to be the shyer folks, more bookish,” Coughlin said. “Learning skills, how we how we communicate with each other better, is something that a lot of us really could use some help with. And part of that comes from experience, and part of it comes from taking some effort to learn those.”

Coughlin noted that it’s important to communicate effectively with each other, and that “we can come up with ideas that are better than we might think of on our own. It’s a really important skill [and one] that we sometimes overlook … we are creatures in a community, and communication is an important part of what we do with each other.”

4: Don’t forget the basics

While 6G will undoubtedly require a growing set of new skills, Brown said it should not be forgotten that every new mobile generation builds on the earlier “Gs,” while new developments are also still taking place even in earlier generations such as 4G.

“Each time there’s a release from 3GPP, it’s an upgrade of the technologies, an evolution of it that’s quite incremental, really, most of the time, and needs to be worked on and incrementally improved on each stage. So I think we’ll continue to see that whatever G we end up having, and how much 6G gets adopted, or even 7G if it ever comes, or any G beyond that, for that matter,” he said.

5: Remember that AI can’t do everything

The use of AI and automation will continue to be embedded more into the technology, making installation and deployment simpler and more plug-and-play.

“One thing people need to remember,” Mead said, “AI is nothing without automation. If you can’t execute on recommendations without automated execution, there’s actually no value created. That’s an important skill set on the automation side that people often overlook.”

Mead added: “Technology is technology, and what do you do when it fails? That’s where humans come in. And so that basic level of understanding will be needed, and access to experts when needed will still be required.”

At the same time, Mead noted that AI and automation are going to become increasingly embedded in the technology. “And of course, that’s a very good thing … because it makes it simpler.”