The 12th Brooklyn Summit marks a tipping point toward the 6G era

The year 2025 marks the halfway point between the 5G and 6G eras of wireless communications. It’s a milestone symbolizing the bridge between the groundbreaking 5G technologies that were unleashed at the start of this decade and the promise of the next generation of immersive 6G networks that await us at the end of it.

Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the premier events of the communications industry would focus on this significant transition that will propel theoretical concepts into standardized technologies and, eventually, innovative products that shape our world.  

The theme of this year’s Brooklyn 6G Summit, hosted by Nokia and the NYU Wireless research center, was aptly coined “Building what’s next” and it primarily explored two critical pillars of 6G development: artificial intelligence and value creation.

For the 12th time, leading voices from technology, business, academia and regulation came together to shape the future of wireless in a three-day event on the campus of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. 

A series of keynote addresses, lively panels and physical demonstrations showcased a wide range of 6G topics surrounding AI and value creation, such as energy efficiency, security, network digital twins, the integration of Non-Terrestrial Networks and more.

Nokia President and CEO Justin Hotard kicked it all off in a recorded fireside chat with his new chief technology and AI officer Pallavi Mahajan, in which he described how Nokia will be at the heart of a new hyper-digital 6G world and the AI Supercycle and AI-Native networks that will accompany it.

“What’s going to change as we look ahead is the opportunity for AI to be a bridge between the physical and the digital world,” he said. “We realize that for networks to be valuable in this world they need to actually be different. They need to be designed from the start for AI.”

In 6G, it’s all about AI

Like other upgrades of generations of communications, the evolution from 5G to 6G is expected to generate faster speeds, lower latency and better performance. But 6G looks to offer much more value in creating a fusion of the digital, physical and human worlds.

Fresh off the announcement of the groundbreaking strategic partnership with Nokia   , in which it is investing $1 billion to accelerate AI-RAN innovation and lead transition from 5G to 6G, NVIDIA Senior Vice President Ronnie Vasishta highlighted the centrality of AI to the 6G future.

“6G really distributes AI to the entire population and enterprises. It's the connectivity fabric for AI, and it cannot be underestimated how important that is,” he said. “When you look at a dynamic world and you also start to use the network as a sensor, AI becomes essential. It’s very different from the 5G world.”

More than 300 participants, including more than 60 speakers and panelists, attended this year’s gathering at the New York University (NYU) Brooklyn campus, and many more tuned in for the livestream, to provide an eclectic gathering of academia, industry analysts, service providers, equipment vendors and startups from various corners of the telecom industry.

These included a wide swath of customers, partners, engineers and innovators, as well as representatives from Verizon Wireless, KDDI Research, Intel, NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm, Axiom Space and more.

For instance, Arpit Mehta, the Head of Americas Carrier Product Management at Meta, discussed the future of immersive experience with AI glasses, while wearing a pair of futuristic spectacles on his face as he described what they could do.

Keynotes were delivered by major operators from the United States, India, South Korea and Japan, each outlining their vision of 6G implementation and predicting how it could affect industry and society. 

“6G, so far, in my view needs to solve two priorities: the uplink problem and the device problem,” said Yago Tenorio, SVP Strategy at Verizon Wireless, explaining what needed to be done to unlock the vast 6G potential. “What matters to the customer is: give him a native, cellular, connected sensor network that he can deploy around him in any way he wants.”

Lively panel discussions included those on AI Data, the role of verticals in 6G value creation and the impact of large Telco models and network digital twins.

There was also a special segment devoted to the Nokia Bell Labs centennial celebration, in which Nokia Bell Labs President for Core Research Peter Vetter outlined how the 6G advancements of today stand on the shoulders of giants from the past 100 years of Bell Labs technology.

“The big innovations that happened at Bell Labs in our 100-year history shaped our wireless industry,” Vetter said. “But we are not only reflecting on what happened in the past, we reflect and highlight what we are doing to shape the next 100 years. And that starts for the 6G era in the next decade.”

Watch our three roving reporter roundups from the summit: 

Industry and academia working together

The summit included nearly 40 demonstrations from Nokia and participating companies, showcasing the vast potential of future 6G networks. It also featured an Open House, where NYU Wireless students showcased a wide range of cutting-edge technologies on campus, such as nanotech labs, various robotic arms, robots and even robotic dogs.

Later, some of these same students took on their professors in the first 6G Brooklyn Summit Game Show. The Jeopardy-style game included categories such as history, fundamentals, spectrum, 6G, AI/ML and Non-Terrestrial Networks.

In a crowd-pleasing upset, which bode well for the future of technology, the students emerged victorious by a decisive margin.

In was an outcome that did not trouble in the least one of the professors who participated.

“We always want our students to do better than we did, so I’m delighted they beat us,” said NYU Wireless founder Ted Rappaport.

Indeed, one of the main characteristics of the Brooklyn 6G Summit is the focus on strong collaboration between industry and academia to shape the future 6G-era together. Appropriately, the opening panel was devoted to the U.S. academic view of 6G.

“When you bring people together when there is a new technology, you can make great strides,” Rappaport added. “It’s how you build a comfort level and a consensus on what’s most important. We are doing that for 6G.”

But before diving into the future, there was also room to celebrate the past as the summit honored several trailblazers in telecommunication technology. The annual Pioneer Award was presented to Dave Forney, namesake of the influential Forney algorithm in coding theory and the inventor of the modern modem. The Lifetime Academic Achievement Award was bestowed upon Prof. Andrea Goldsmith, the president of Stony Brook University and the former Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton, who shared her captivating life story and trailblazing path as a female technologist in a celebratory dinner in her honor.

It all added up to what Head of Nokia Standards Peter Merz said was a hopeful message for the future.

“We had candid discussions with excellent people that are moving the ecosystem forward,” he concluded. “There is still a lot of work to be done but I am confident that we as a community will make it happen.”