6G split talk underlines risky work of standards-setting 

Standards development involves long-term investment decisions fraught with risk 

By Jake Schindler 

Zhang Yunming, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), is reported to have called for a “unified global 6G standard” and promised to “work with global partners” at a mid-November industry event in Shanghai. 

These utterly uncontroversial sentiments are shared from Shenzhen to Helsinki to Stockholm to San Diego. So why were they translated and picked up in the English-language telecoms trade press? 

The reason is that if you listen to some analysts, whispers of competing 6G technologies are becoming something of an elephant in 3GPP meeting rooms. 

Dean Bubley, a longtime telecoms analyst, thinks that there is a 40% chance of multiple technical approaches emerging. “We can complain that’s not elegant or efficient, but it’s hard to argue it’s not plausible,” he wrote last week. “Yet nobody is talking about it.” Those who dismiss the scenario completely have their head in the sand, Bubley adds. 

US-China tension is the obvious catalyst. Past US trade restrictions have threatened to impede global standards cooperation. But these rules have been tweaked over the years to avoid chilling US participation in 5G and other areas.  

Biden administration officials have sought to calm innovators by describing US contribution to global standards as “vital to our national security”. Still, we’ve seen that this is an area where policy can change abruptly and unintended consequences are rife. 

Setting geopolitics aside, Bubley points to industry forces that could have the same effect: cost-conscious network operators could push for a more conservative evolution of 5G; a competitor such as IEEE could enter the fray; 5G’s lack of competition could come to be blamed for its perceived disappointments. 

This is still fringe opinion, though, at least in the commercial world. “At the industry level, I don’t think there’s anybody who wants to see a fragmented 6G standard,” commented Light Reading’s Robert Clark. 

A whole new world for licensing 

Competing standards could mean all sorts of different things for the licensing landscape.  

The unified 5G standard facilitates a licensing environment in which there is significant disclosure of declared SEPs through the ETSI database. Major players routinely conclude litigation-free world-wide licence deals in accordance with an IPR Policy that has been extensively analysed by courts around the world. The alternative could lead to much more complexity. 

Many of the major mobile players are both contributors to and implementers of the global 5G standard. A world with, for example, one standard dominant in emerging markets and another in high-income economies could scramble these roles. And how would each rival trade bloc deal with IP from the other? 

Another possibility is that 6G development could be dragged out. 5G, 4G and even older generations could hang on well past the phase-out timelines anticipated today, perhaps past the expiry of many relevant patents.  

Losing the economies of scale that come with a global standard could squeeze margins in every corner of the industry, with huge consequences for R&D, patent portfolios, licensing budgets, consumer prices and a host of other areas. 

The point is, there are a lot of knock-on effects to think through. But it’s a near-certainty that patent licensing will not be the number one consideration for the people who take the really big decisions in coming years. Therein lies the risk. 

Standards development is a risky enterprise 

It’s very difficult to say what the world will look like in 2030, the year 6G deployment is expected to start. Just look at the staggering pace of both technological and political change we have witnessed in 2024.  

But looking ahead is exactly what organisations participating in 6G standardisation must do. After all, this work is already well underway within all the major wireless R&D powerhouses. 

Without a crystal ball, standards development is a long-term investment fraught with risk – one that few innovators would undertake without the prospect of financial compensation if and when their technology is deployed by others. 

If policymakers are serious about viewing standards participation as a critical aspect of tech security and strategic sovereignty, they must not lose sight of that fact. 

Jake Schindler is Senior Content and Communications Manager at Sisvel 

This article was prepared by him in a personal capacity. The opinions expressed within it are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sisvel. The content is for informational purposes and should not be taken as legal advice. 

Photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay