Today marks a worldwide celebration of standards. It is not only a celebration of all the voluntary work of countless individual experts who contribute to the development of standards but, as well, to the importance of standards to fostering technological change, contributing to economic progress and improving our quality of life.

The theme from ISO, IEC and ITU each year is “a shared vision for a better world,” with an emphasis this year on sustainable development goal 9 (SDG9). SDG9 focuses on building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation. On World Standards Day we are also reminded that “the entire standards system is built on collaboration”. It is testament to the power of cooperation and the belief that we are stronger than the sum of our parts. By working together, we are empowering people and industries with real-world solutions to address sustainability challenges head-on. 

It is with these inspiring thoughts in mind that I want to address the standardization efforts in which many of us are currently immersed: namely, 6G. I think we can all agree that with 6G, we are on the cusp of something decisively different than previous generations. A new world of possibilities confronts us. Whether it is the promise/peril of AI, ongoing cloudification, cybersecurity and quantum computing or the need to meet challenges of economic and ecologic sustainability, we have a sense that a different technological, social and economic order is emerging, and the cellular network will play a critical role in bringing it into being.

This is a big mandate and responsibility. The scope of possibilities is exciting but, when it comes to standard setting, also somewhat daunting. Setting global standards is about making choices, not only about what we can do, but also, crucially, about what we are not going to do. In the face of so many possibilities, how can we set a standard that simplifies without being simplistic and enables continuous technology advancements like AI? We need a global standard that can accommodate as-yet-unimagined use cases for the decades to come. One that doesn’t get in its own way, remaining lean yet powerful.

Finding focus

For a long time, the standardization process in the telco world was focused on delivering better voice communications. In other words, the use case was for the most part agreed upon by everyone. A big change occurred with mobile internet, and Nokia, as one of the leaders in the standards community, helped establish standards for the crucial evolution to mobile telephony and through successive generations, finally mobile broadband with 4G. However, once again, the use case was universally recognized, a communications device in your pocket or purse. This singleness of purpose brought clarity in design.

With 5G, we broke free of building personal communication devices and, for the first time, opened up our concept of the network as a platform for a multitude of software-driven applications and industrial use cases connecting almost everything to everything else. The number of 3GPP members rose in two and half decades from a few hundred to 800+. With such diversity comes opportunities and challenges.

5G is well suited to a decade in which so many new members joined the standardization process and new, adjacent technologies intersected with the network. Yet, looking forward to the 2030s, 6G needs to lay the foundation stones for a sustainable shift that reinvigorates the clarity by design approach. To some extent, this means making hard choices and picking winners. Our challenge as a community is to resist continuing down the path that made 5G ideal for this time and embrace what the ISO, IEC and ITU reminds us, on World Standards Day, is our calling: working together, to empower people and industries with real-world solutions to face sustainability challenges head on.

Meeting tomorrow’s challenges

As we look ahead to the 2030s, it is hard not to see that scale and inclusivity are primary requirements in a successful global standard. Starting at the device level, 5G has opened the door to so many new ideas, but it has also, in its optimization for specific features and use cases, created complexity and fragmentation, which are inimical to scale and inclusiveness. 6G should be designed to natively support a wide variety of device types optimized for different use cases, form factors, hardware and processing power requirements, bit rates and cost constraints. In our opinion, the number of modem implementation options should be reduced to just three, simplifying the overall 6G design. 6G has the potential to be the connectivity platform for the future hyper-digital world, but only if it empowers, not constrains.

The other clear design imperative is sustainability. The Paris agreement sets us a number of milestones, which many countries are struggling to meet. A key technology that will help us get there is AI. Not the energy-hungry LLMs and Generative AI projects on the front page today, but narrower uses of AI such as energy and resource optimization, which are just the kinds of problems for which AI is best suited. We should standardize the use of it throughout the network. Along with modularity and microservices, AI should be leveraged in a responsible way to ensure that the network has maximum flexibility to respond to shifting demands and ensure efficient utilization of resources.

AI will also play a critical role in operational automation. From self-evolving networks to self-generating digital twins, AI-native networks will learn and anticipate needs, shifting workloads across the cloud continuum from core to far edge based on use case requirements, whether that is for bandwidth, storage, compute (CPU/GPU), or network processing.

6G needs to firmly establish what was begun in 5G, creating programmable networks that learn and anticipate needs, multi-stakeholder service ecosystems that support the massive traffic growth associated with AI. For me, it is clear that we do not only need a unified way of handling similar capabilities but also a uniform way to expose the enabling resources. For 6G the upcoming Release 21 in 3GPP allows us to get the right things right, right from the beginning.

Finally, we have to take very seriously the responsibility that comes with the idea of building a resilient infrastructure; security, trust and privacy must be a key aspect of every decision we make. The world is being built on the backs of the networks we are designing and building. Any lapse in security architectures and standards could have disastrous consequences, especially when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) comes online. Complexity isn’t necessarily the enemy of security; bad design is. But needless complexity doesn’t make good design any easier.

Design to value

We don’t lack the capacity to achieve this. By tapping into the knowledge and expertise of the 800+ members of 3GPP, we can certainly meet the technical challenges. Our problem is cultural — but not irredeemably so. We must move from 'design by committee' to 'design to value'. Everyone involved, including Nokia, needs to make some concessions during the standardization process, so we can realize the full potential of digital: sustainable business growth, productivity in industry, and inclusive access.

There is not always a need to specify different options, which are counterproductive to achieve a healthy business environment. Consensus-driven standards should aim for technical excellence, not settle for mediocrity. We only need to think back to the 4G/LTE standard, for instance, which was more in line with these principles. Together we need to collaborate on global technology standards for a safer, modern world.

Part of this means letting go of things that simply haven’t worked. I’m reminded of an aphorism from the composer Gustav Mahler: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” In the last decade, we dreamed and tried many things. Let’s preserve what is best about those efforts and kindle something focused and pure for the next generation.