ATIS’ Next G Alliance (NGA) announced publication of the 6G Roadmap for Vertical Industries. The report builds on the NGA’s 2022 Roadmap to 6G, which establishes the North American vision for next-generation communications systems. With the new verticals study, the NGA focuses on the demand side of the future 6G ecosystem. The report explores how 6G can help meet the applications needs of a broad range of industries, including agriculture; automotive; education, gaming and entertainment; eHealth; industrial; mining; public safety and smart cities.

It further traces the implications of vertical-specific use cases into applications that 6G can enable and highlights promising technologies that need to be researched and engineered into operational systems. The NGA based its research on direct input from experts in the vertical industries represented to identify their unique 6G visions and needs. The result is to know how the future network can advance innovation in those respective industries — and be designed to foster that potential.

“Within the communications industry, expectations are high for new value-creation opportunities in the vertical domains with both 5G and 6G,” said NGA Managing Director Mike Nawrocki. “Acting on its research from this new report, the NGA has set three goals to meet these expectations: to translate North American needs to technology outcomes, to target shared investments in 6G proof-of-concepts and testbeds, and to connect North American 6G needs directly to the marketplace. This work is positioning the future network to become an innovation catalyst — and also advance North American 6G leadership globally.”

“A majority of current 5G commercial wide area deployments have been centered around eMBB (enhanced Mobile Broadband) services and future deployments will be targeting vertical use cases as outlined in this report,” said Amitava Ghosh (Nokia), chair of the NGA National 6G Roadmap Working Group (NRWG).“This first-of-a-kind paper focuses on vertical industry needs for both 5G and 6G with the aim of helping the ICT industry reach out to the broadest range of stakeholders for future application opportunities. Its publication is the result of tireless effort from NRWG members and sector experts who were interviewed for the content and responsible for its overall organization.”