Etisalat unveils its ambitious 6G plans

Etisalat, a leading telecom operator in the United Arab Emirates, announced on Wednesday its foray into the next generation of the mobile network with considerable efforts toward 6G realization, conducting research and developing international standards, the main building blocks for the 6G ecosystem.

The announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, an annual trade show dedicated to the mobile communications industry.

Haitham Abdulazzak, chief technology officer, etisalat, shared his insights during his address at a session titled ‘Setting the roadmap to 6G’ at the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the annual trade show dedicated to the mobile communications industry.

“As part of our vision and future technology planning, 6G is going beyond earth networks into space to enable a new era of services and usage scenarios with terabyte data traffic resulting in extraordinary human to machine interaction, Abdulazzak said at the event running from June 28 until July 1, 2021.

The roll out of 5G began in 2019 and is expected to have more than 1.7 billion subscribers worldwide by 2025, according to the GSM Association.

It has faster data speeds than 4G, and has higher data caps for mobile devices. Sports networks can also use 5G micro-networks to stream events both live and wirelessly.

6G is expected to be even faster and to support applications such as augmented and virtual reality, as well as AI infrastructure.

"As part of our vision and future technology planning, 6G is going beyond earth networks into space to enable a new era of services and usage scenarios with terabyte data traffic resulting in extraordinary human to machine interaction," said Mr Abdulazzak.

"Etisalat is upgrading tools and capabilities of its R&D centre to enhance the contribution towards 6G global standardisation within the international fora and alliances."