The Chinese government has nominated 6G as one of its priority projects for 2023. In its annual start-of-year work conference, meanwhile, the Ministry for Industry and IT said it aims to push forward in “comprehensive” development of 6G this year.
Along with the ministry’s commitments to new aircraft and industrial revitalization, ICT officials also want to hasten the rollout of 5G and optical networks, expand 5G private networking, work on the industrial Internet, and improve data security.
but they do highlight 6G as a focus area for the telecom and tech industry, which is greatly affected by government priorities.
This comes after other recent events that shed some light on China’s development and 6G strategy.
China Telecom published a white paper at the end of the previous year outlining its 6G ambition. The document, which was produced by the China Telecom Research Institute, suggests a “three-layer and four-sided” framework as well as a distributed and intelligent programmable RAN (P-RAN) network architecture.
It’s interesting to note that the white paper also makes the case that device-to-device connection will be necessary since building up dense terahertz-band or mmWave networks will be expensive.
Six months ago, heavyweight China Mobile issued its own 6G ideas, calling for “three bodies, four layers and five sides.” China’s other 6G news is a call for proposals on potential key technologies from the national coordinating body, the IMT-2030 6G Promotion Group.
According to an English-language statement posted by CAICT, the main objectives are “to inspire university-academy-industry-association entities for technology innovations, gather and form a rich reserve of 6G potential key technologies, and support 6G research, standardization, and industrial R&D.”
Prior to the application deadline in November 2023, universities and research institutions from other countries are welcome to apply. According to the statement, the suggested solutions must have “application and promotion value for 6G innovation and development,” and the essential technical indicators must be able to be assessed and confirmed.
