Page 23 - Kaleidoscope Academic Conference Proceedings 2020

BEYOND 5G/6G TELECOMMUNICATIONS ENSURING CONTINUITY IN
BUSINESS, RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

Akihiro Nakao

Special Advisor to the President and Vice Dean of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies,
Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo, Japan

Teleworking such as teleconferencing and remote education has been recognized as a new normal
activity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has occurred simultaneously around the world
and has instantaneously suspended our social activities. The misfortune of this has made us re-
recognize the need for enhancing and upgrading information communication infrastructure into a
more robust one. The activity accounts for one of the SDGs, SDG 9, that is to build resilient
infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
With the spread of COVID-19, the biggest challenge is how to ensure continuity in our social
activities, especially business, research and education.

We posit that revolutionary progress in research and development and standardization in
communication infrastructure be a necessity for the next decade, as it should play a significant role
in ensuring the continuity of our social activities.
On the one hand, commercial 5G services have been globally deployed and utilized all over the world.
On the other hand, research and development strategies aiming at 6G are already in progress. In Japan,
5G services started in the spring of 2020 and the discussions on 6G were initiated in January 2020.
In June 2020, the strategic proposal for 6G R&D has been summarized by the "Beyond 5G Strategic
Board" held by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Also, several counties have
allocated white space to private 5G usage, and which is open to non-telecommunication companies
so that they can operate their own customized 5G networks. We believe that this “democratization”
(making something accessible to anyone) will open a door to the innovations towards 6G.

We observe that besides the regular migration path from 5G to 6G promoted by telecommunication
operators and vendors, there is another evolution path possible, from private 5G to private 6G and
then to public 6G. This is because a lot more stakeholders may participate in the game of developing
customized solutions tailored for their real use cases that may be eventually adopted as viable 6G
technologies to be standardized.
For instance, not only industries but also academia should be able to define new communication
technologies for 6G in their development and operations of private networks.
We believe that in the course of developing 6G by “democratization of telecommunications” we may
further develop new ways of utilizing telecommunications to ensure social life continuity, e.g. to live
with COVID-19.
This keynote presentation introduces perspectives towards 6G especially focusing on the
democratization of telecommunications, and discusses how to cope with planetary scale issues, such
as the COVID-19 pandemic, from the stand point of the role that future telecommunications should
play.

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