6G Will Rely on Improved Security, Trust in Supply Chain and Open-Source Standards, Report Says

WASHINGTON, February 23, 2022 – The advent of 6G will rely on an improved era of security and trust in the supply chain and open-source standards, according to a report this month by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions.

“The applicability of 6G in many critical applications puts much more demanding requirements on dependability, resilience, attack resistance, detection, and mitigation than in previous generations,” said the February issue of the Next G Alliance Report: Roadmap to 6G.

The report outlines the “6G vision for North America” and “describes major steps” that need to be taken to “ensure North American wireless leadership for the next decade and beyond,” according to the press release. The world is currently moving toward 5G mobile wireless communication.

“North American governments have expressed concerns about the dependence of the semiconductor and manufacturing value chain on limited sources of supply,” the report said. “Various government agencies and departments, including the military, are considering increased use of commercial technologies to meet their own [information and communications technology] needs. There is a perception that open interfaces and open-source implementations of software will mitigate some of the risks that have been identified, while offering avenues for greater competition from more diverse solution providers.”

The report comes in the same month Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urged Congress to rush through legislation that would provide funding to begin ramping up manufacturing of semiconductors domestically. Otherwise, she said, the country faces a “national emergency.”

The report also comes after Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks had previously noted that many of the technical aspects of 6G, such as artificial intelligence, could “lead to vulnerabilities.”