Join John Kuzin from Qualcomm as he discusses the crucial topic of spectrum and its role in the evolution toward 6G. Explore why securing additional spectrum is vital for mobile operators, the progress on spectrum sharing, and the challenges of deploying new technologies across global regions. With Qualcomm’s cutting-edge work in upper mid-band frequencies and its role in 6G development, this conversation offers insights into the future of connectivity and how spectrum impacts the mobile landscape.
Alejandro Piñero:
Welcome back, everyone, here to our home away from home, the Fierce Network TV studio in Barcelona covering MWC 2025. I'm Alejandro Piñero, your host, keeping the seat warm for Stephen Saunders till he's back with us. All right, well, we're going to talk about spectrum now and can't be a more important topic. You can't do any of this fun stuff that's being shown at the show without the spectrum to support it, and I'm excited to be with John Kuzin from Qualcomm. Thanks for joining us to speak to us today about this huge topic.
John Kuzin:
Thank you.
Alejandro Piñero:
So John, let's start at the top here. Do we need more spectrum and why should we be thinking about this now?
John Kuzin:
Yeah, that's a very good question. It's very important to think about Spectrum for 6G now because it takes work to open up spectrum bands for mobile operations. And I actually started working on spectrum for 6G back in 2021 because we knew the bands that we're targeting for 6G are going to be difficult to open because they're shared, many of them with federal incumbents in the U.S. And also, there's a fair amount of technology work and standards work that needs to occur for deployments to be ready to go later this decade, and that's the end goal.
Alejandro Piñero:
So you mentioned 6G there. Obviously we as an industry are starting to think about it and spectrum is the base there. Are we thinking about any particular bands, any particular part of the spectrum? And are there any harmonization issues perhaps that we should be considering at this early stage?
John Kuzin:
Yeah, that's another great question. In the U.S., the band that's being targeted for 6G wide area deployments is the 7 to 8 gigahertz band. We're designing 6G systems that will be able to deploy and provide coverage identical to the coverage available in the lower mid-bands at 3 gigahertz. In Europe in particular, the band that's being targeted for 6G deployments is the upper 6 gigahertz band from 6425 to 7125. And we believe that the same equipment can support both bands so that you could have common infrastructure and common devices in both the U.S. and in the EU.
Alejandro Piñero:
Now, what about Qualcomm specifically? When you're thinking about spectrum and towards 6G, what's your policy? Are you prioritizing development in particular bands? How are you working through this?
John Kuzin:
Yeah, so Qualcomm actually has, and we're demonstrating here in the show, we've designed prototype base stations that operate in this upper mid-band frequency and we're comparing the performance to the lower mid-band operations and we're getting results like we expected. Perhaps even better. We're showing that the operations in the lower mid-bands can provide very good connectivity. The challenges there is there aren't many wide bandwidths and 6G is going to operate in bandwidths between 100 to 400 megahertz wide, and you're needing that to provide the capacity that 6G is going to be needed to support.
What happens with mobile operators is they have basically three means of meeting mobile demand. One is they'll upgrade from 2G to 3G, 4G to 5G, 5G to 6G. That upgrade typically provides an order of magnitude increase in performance. In addition to that, they densify their networks and provide more small cells to provide increased frequency reuse to provide greater capacity in smaller areas. Doing those two is not enough to support the expected demand. If you look at the projections, it looks like a hockey stick. That is driving the need for more spectrum. So it's not like the carriers are sitting by just hoping for more spectrum to come. There's a demonstrated need for more spectrum. If more spectrum is not deployed and countries can't deploy 6G systems, they'll be left behind on 5G systems that are not going to be able to support the connectivity demands of tomorrow.
Alejandro Piñero:
Makes sense. And John, to close, I did want to get your take on network spectrum sharing and whether that's going to be a reality or is that something we're looking at towards 6G.
John Kuzin:
Yes. Spectrum sharing is increasingly important. It is something that's been going on for decades and it also has various flavors. When you look at unlicensed systems, many of the unlicensed Wi-Fi systems that operate in the 5 gigahertz band as well as the lower 6 gigahertz band share their spectrum with higher power incumbent operations. And they inherently operate in a mode where they're required to accept interference from these systems and not cause harmful interference to those systems. That is one area of spectrum sharing.
Another area is actually having co-primary operations between, for example, a federal incumbent operator and a commercial mobile network operator. For a commercial mobile network operator to deploy a system, they need to have certainty that they are going to have access to spectrum where they have the greatest demand. So that is the challenge. Many federal incumbents are reticent to share their operations and what they're doing because in many cases there are national security interests. So it gets a little bit more complicated when you're talking about sharing in an outdoor environment between two incumbents. For that reason, one of the things that we think it's worth looking at is whether the federal incumbent operators could actually operate in less spectrum, share with other federal incumbents, potentially take auction revenue to upgrade their systems, use less spectrum, and they also could take advantage of, like they're taking advantage now of 5G, they can also take advantage of 6G systems as well.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Well, listen, John, thanks so much for taking the time and coming here to talk to us about such a huge topic in a short amount of time.
John Kuzin:
My pleasure.
Alejandro Piñero:
All right, thanks so much.
John Kuzin:
Thank you, Alejandro.