Light Reading Podcasts

Peter Vetter, president of Bell Labs Core Research for Nokia Bell Labs, joins the podcast to discuss the industry's preparations for 6G and how it will differ from previous cellular generations. Vetter has been with Nokia for over 20 years and has a background in optical communications, FTTH, radio access and network infrastructure research.

"What 5G has done is connect humans and machines. In 6G, we expect a much richer connectivity of machines and the physical world, the human world, with the digital world – so, the fusion of the digital worlds with physical worlds," explains Vetter. "And that's enabled by massive scale deployment of sensors that in real time capture the state of the physical world."

Commercial deployments of 6G will begin in 2030 but will take ten years to prepare, he adds.

Here are just a few things covered in this podcast episode:

• How 6G will differ from previous generations and when it will emerge (02:51)
• Digital twinning and simulating the physical environment in a digital space (04:37)
• Use cases for digital twinning such as traffic, retail and healthcare management (08:17)
• "AI comes to the rescue" for network automation (09:18)
• Paving the way for 6G (09:48)
• 6G radios learning from each other (11:40)
• 6G for emergency response, energy management and public safety (12:53)
• Ensuring security is built-in for 6G (15:10)
• Critical network infrastructure for 6G (16:38)
• One global 6G standard but national and regional requirements (18:36)
• When 6G applications and specifications will emerge (20:25)
• 6G will "unleash human possibilities … putting humans back at the center," says Vetter. (23:18)

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