Telefonica said that this 6G project is funded by the Europeanand the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of Spain

The IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with Spanish operator Telefónica, NEC Corporation and BluSpecs, announced the launch of the ENABLE-6G project.

In a release, Telefonica said that the initiative aims to address the challenges that will be faced by future 6G networks, such as increased connectivity, higher performance demands and advanced object and environment detection and communication.

The carrier also noted that this project is funded by the Europeanand the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of Spain, in the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR).

“As 5G technology continues to be the driving force behind edge computing and autonomous vehicles, researchers and industry experts are already looking towards the future and the development of 6G technology. With challenges in capacity, energy efficiency, latency, and data security and privacy, the development of the ENABLE-6G project has become crucial. It’s necessary for 6G networks to become more adaptable and intelligent to enable the realization of a future vision that will contend with greater levels of complexity, contextualization, and data traffic while consuming less energy and offering stronger security and privacy measures,” Telefonica said.

The telco highlighted that one of the main objectives is to ensure advanced privacy protections are builtthe architecture, as precise mapping and sensing, data privacy and security have become major concerns, and has also become a major benefit for new use cases. “Another strategic objective is the design and implementation of software-defined networks that can operationalize optimized edge-to-cloud processing to facilitate time-critical and geo-distributed network orchestration. The ENABLE-6G project represents a major step forward in the new technologies6G to improve wireless communications, provide environmental sensing and significantly reduce the energy footprint per device to avoid a large overall increase in network power consumption. We are excited about the potential impact of this project and look forward to collaborating with our partners to bring it to fruition,” the Spanish operator added.

Earlier this year, Europe’s 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) and ETSI recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to boost cooperation on 5G and 6G.

6G-IA has a wide range of activities, including “beyond 5G” (B5G) and 6G research, pre-standardization activities, policy and regulatory issues, 5G and 6G frequency concepts, international collaboration and verticals’ engagement to shape next-generation industrial use cases.

The main aim of the 6G-IA is to contribute to Europe’s leadership on 5G, 5G evolution and SNS/6G research, the organization said. The 6G-IA represents the private side in both the 5G Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) and the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU). In the 5G-PPP and SNS JU, the European Commission represents the public side.

In August 2022, 6G-IA and ATIS’ Next G Alliance signed a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange information regarding their work programs in areas of “mutual interest” in the field of future 6G communication systems and networks.

The Next G Alliance said that the agreement also covers collaboration on joint activities, including workshops, seminars, webinars and trials on 6G-related topics.