The stakes are high for 6G in North America. Requirements on future telecoms systems include better security and trustworthiness; the ability to overcome digital divides; more sustainable operation; and it needs to be commercially viable for telcos. Accomplishing all this can help return the continent the technology lead it lost in 5G and also deliver concrete improvements to business and society. What can we do in practice to reconcile these demands into a coherent set of policies and projects? Find out from people shaping the North American landscape in politics and research.

• Anne Neuberger, Deputy Assistant to the President of the USA
• Mike Nawrocki, Managing Director, Next G Alliance
• Rajesh Pankaj, EVP & CTO, InterDigital
• Tommaso Melodia, William Lincoln Smith Chair Professor, Northestern University
• Ray Dolan, CEO & Chairman, Cohere & NSTAC member
• Alex Lawrence, Managing Editor, 6GWorld

The CHIPS & SCIENCE Act is likely to be one of the most significant actions shaping the USA’s competitive position over the coming decade. Investing a huge amount of money into the region to secure its self-reliance in silicon and in related IP will have important secondary effects on the market. As 2023 will start to see the allocation of funds and more detail on the strategies involved, this session brings together key decision-makers to explore their plans, thought processes and priorities.

• Amanda Toman, Head of Wireless Innovation Fund, NTIA
• Jaydee Griffith, CTO, Wireless Innovation Fund, NTIA
• Jack Gold, President, J.Gold Associates
• Erwin Gianchandani, Assistant Director, NSF

While the ITU has helped foster broad global agreement on the direction of 6G technology development, the devil will, as ever, be in the details. Across the world different governments and their agencies have important differences in their views of priorities, methods and outcomes. This session brings together key stakeholders from major 6G markets to highlight the issues that need resolving before standards start to ‘bake in’ particular approaches and solutions.

• Takehiro Nakamura, SVP, NTT DoCoMo
• Matti Latva-aho, Director, 6G FLAGSHIP, University of Oulu
• Kiran Kuchi, Professor, IIT Hyderabad
• Marc Grant, Vice-Chair, Next G Alliance Roadmap WG
• Doug Castor, Senior Director, InterDigital Research & Innovation

While much of the conversation on 6G focuses on technology outcomes, these won’t be implemented effectively without both a business case and businesses geared up for that business case. Companies throughout the tech and telco ecosystems are going through transformations, but these are slow processes. Join senior executives to weigh up the role of business change today in ensuring that 6G can deliver impact from the get-go. Are we doing enough?

• Sidd Chenumolu, VP Technology Development, DISH
• Jeremy Nacer, Vice-Chair, Next G Alliance Societal & Economic Needs WG
• Charlie Zhang, SVP, Samsung Research America
• Ken Figueredo, Founder, More With Mobile

We are seeing not just a technology change but also a business realignment in the evolution from early 5G through to 6G. This is affecting some companies earlier than others but will percolate through the industry. In this segment we hear from people on the cutting edge. 

• Gerhard Schoenthal, COO, Virginia Diodes
• Keysight

Not very long ago North America boasted important telecoms equipment manufacturing firms such as Nortel and Lucent. These are things of the past, however, while areas such as Silicon Valley have boomed. While North America aims to lead in 6G, does the right blend of companies exist to enable this? Put your questions and observations to the experts weighing in on this debate.

• Caroline Chan, VP Network Business Incubation, Intel
• Nada Golmie, Fellow, IEEE & NIST
• Alex Choi, Chairman, O-RAN Alliance
• Diane Rinaldo, Executive Director, ORPC
• Benoit Pelletier, Director, Next Gen Ecosystems & Alliances, VMware

Research and development are critical foundations for future progress, but there are all too often failures to bridge the gap between conducting research and developing commercial products. This session looks at models and examples that can help build on America’s strength in research to deliver game-changing products and services for the 6G era.

• Kristian Toivo, Executive Director, Telecom Infra Project
• Ali Khayrallah, Senior Scientist, Ericsson Advanced Technology Research
• Eric Burger, Professor, Virginia Tech
• Monisha Ghosh, Professor, Notre Dame University
• Tommaso Melodia, William Lincoln Smith Chair Professor, Northeastern University
• Nicola Blefari Melazzi, Professor, University of Rome Tor Vergata

Featuring

• Tareq Amin, Former CEO, Rakuten Mobile
• Ray Dolan, CEO & Chairman, Cohere Technologies
• Ed Knapp, CTO, American Tower
• Caroline Chan, VP Network Business Incubation, Intel

Please join us for a chance to unwind, socialise and network with amazing views over DC in the panoramic Rotunda. A brilliant chance to ask the questions and have the conversations you missed out on during the day.

Join Igal Elbaz, Chief Network Technology Officer at AT&T and Chair of ATIS, as he shares his view of the road ahead. The pressures on the industry and telcos translate to a very particular set of needs today and in 6G; what ways forward make sense and what are the pitfalls to avoid?

The automotive industry has been one of the pioneers of connectivity, from the carphone to GPS and now much more. With the introduction of 5G and its planned evolution towards 6G, how does this tie in with the needs and aims of car-makers and their users? Join us to explore what relevance or use cases 6G could deliver that the automotive industry needs, and what potential issues we need to avoid.

• Graham Carter, Technical Director, IWPC
• Scott McCormick, President, Connected Vehicle Trade Association
• Adnan Khan, Director, Technology & Market Development, Anritsu
• Manjunath Varayali, Vehicle to Cloud Architect, CNH Industrial
• 5GAA Representative

It’s becoming clearer that working outside the telecom industry’s historic comfort zone is a necessity. During this segment, we hear from two thought leaders in very different disciplines; what changes are they bringing to the people they work with which will help usher in a 6G era?

• Bill Best, CEO, Azenby
• Northeastern University

When many people think of ‘smart industry’ they think of factories and refineries. We are starting to see an adoption of 5G in these environments today, but it’s slow going, with the focus of attention shifting from the technology itself to the business benefits. What lessons can we learn from 5G to ensure that 6G can deliver clear opportunities for companies – those that have invested in 5G during the 2020s and those coming to it new?

• Andreas Mueller, President, 5G-ACIA
• Tom Snyder, Founder, RIoT
• Peter Vetter, President, Nokia Bell Labs
• Mitch Tseng, Research Consultant, ITRI

There is a huge amount of activity around XR and the metaverse which promises to change once again the way we interact with our environment and each other. While technologies at the forefront of AI, spatial computing and more gain the limelight, are there important overlaps between communications and immersive content that offer all stakeholders opportunities to benefit? Leading thinkers explore this here.

• Robert Rice, CEO, Transmira
• Mike Johns, CEO, Digital Mind State
• Ravi Pragada, Sr Director, Research & Innovation, InterDigital
• Jesse Alton, CEO, Angelxr & Co-Chair, Open Metaverse Interoperability Group

While 5G has been seen as a cellular radio standard, we already know 6G cannot be only cellular if it is to deliver all of its promises. In this session we showcase experts developing new capabilities which may ultimately complement cellular technologies for a comprehensive 6G experience.

• Amitava Ghosh, Head of Radio Interface, Nokia Bell Labs
• Josep Jornet, Professor, Northeastern University
• Arunabha Ghosh, Sr Manager, Amazon Lab126
• Lockheed Martin, representative TBA 

Networks today are tending towards much greater automation to manage the complexity of 5G, Open RAN, network slicing and more. While 6G descriptions include it being essentially AI-driven, is there any significant way in which 6G would differ from a complex 5G network?

• Chris Dick, Wireless Architect, Nvidia
• Rittwik Jana, Principal Network Engineer, Google
• Tim O’Shea, CTO, DeepSig
• Abhi Mahadevan, Technologist, Keysight

Join two of the thought leaders exploring the structure of future networks: architecting the core and the edge. Where are we taking these and what needs to happen?

• Mazin Gilbert, Director Engineering, Telecom Analytics, Automation & Orchestration, Google Cloud
• Dario Sabella, Chair, ETSI MEC

Distributed computing and distributed communications are arguably two sides of the same coin – one doesn’t work without the other. While they have been widely discussed for years, they have not been widely implemented yet. This discussion looks at the value for both telecoms and internet players; should we realistically expect a distributed 6G?

• Mariam Sorond, CTO, Service Provider & Edge, VMware
• Bob Gazda, Sr Director, InterDigital
• Manish Singh, CTO, Telecoms Systems Business, Dell
• Yuji Tazaki, Head of Strategy, 6G Infrastructure Planning, Fujitsu