Architectural Transformation towards 6G: Standardization Landscape, Enablers and Challenges
Date, hour and room to be defined
Organizer
- Ömer Bulakci (Nokia, DE)
Motivation and Background
The realization of 6G is no longer a distant vision. Across industry, academia, and standardization bodies, the global telecommunications community is moving at speed to define the technologies, architectural building blocks, and key innovations that will shape the mobile networks of 2030 and beyond. As standards development organizations (SDOs), such as 3GPP, are progressing rapidly to specify the 6G system, experts from industry and academia are advancing new technologies and architectural concepts that aim to deliver major performance gains through AI-native design, enhanced automation, and reduced operational and environmental cost.
This panel will bring together leading voices from industry and academia to debate the defining architectural shifts that will shape 6G and to assess how research and standardization must evolve together to turn vision into impact. It will reflect on recent milestones in standardization, including progress in 3GPP, and examine how research can provide meaningful input into global 6G directions.
Special attention will be given to the main enablers of 6G architecture—such as agentic AI integration, application awareness, cloudification, in-network compute, network simplification, modularity, and monetization based on network slicing—as well as to the key challenges ahead, including interoperability, the need for deterministic & interoperable protocols, and the need for smooth evolution from 5G to 6G.
Questions
- As AI and machine learning become native components of 6G system architecture, being key enablers for enhancing performance, efficiency, and edge intelligence; what are the main technical challenges in achieving this vision?
- How can the key SDOs enable agentic AI integration while at the same time achieve interoperability considering the determinism/inter-operability requirements of the protocols?
- What advancements in 6G network capabilities and architectural changes, compared to 5G, are expected to enable advanced connectivity and beyond connectivity services topics for network customization and monetization such as dependable real-time communications, seamless 3D connectivity, including non-terrestrial networks (NTN) or integrated communication and sensing (ISAC)?
- What will the role of edge computing be in the 6G system and how can it impact the 6G architecture, particularly in correlation with real-time applications, (time-critical) digital twin, and increased AI adoption?
- What are the specific technical and business challenges for enhanced network exposure capabilities, which will require a transition of telco operators’ current business models?
Participants
- Ömer Bulakci (Nokia, DE)
- Takehiro Nakamura (NTT DOCOMO, JP)
- Alain Mourad (InterDigital, UK)
- Patrik Rugeland (Ericsson, SE)
- Diego R. López (Telefonica, ES)
- Elif Uysal (METU and FRESHDATA, TR)
Ömer Bulakci
Dr. Ömer Bulakci is the Research & Standardization Team Leader for Core Network Architecture at Nokia Technology Standards in Germany and the Chairman of the SNS JU 6G Architecture Working Group. He led the Nokia-wide 6G program from April 2022 to March 2024 and served as the Chief System Architect – RAN at Nokia Standards from October 2023 to December 2025. He received his B.Sc. from METU, Türkiye, in 2006, his M.Sc. from TUM, Germany, in 2008, and his doctorate from Aalto University, Finland, in 2013 (formerly TKK). From 2009 to 2012, he worked on LTE-Advanced relaying at Nokia Siemens Networks in Germany in support of his doctorate. From October 2012 to February 2020, he conducted research on 5G system, contributed to EU flagship projects METIS, METIS-II (leading work package on RAN synchronous control plane), and 5G-MoNArch (leading work package on overall architecture/E2E slicing), and contributed to 5G standardization at Huawei GRC, Germany. He served as the Vice-Chairman of the 5GPPP 5G/B5G Architecture Working Group from January 2017 to December 2021, and as the Chairman from December 2021 till April 2024. He is an author/co-author of 100+ technical publications (including book chapters and book editorships), is an inventor of 220+ patent families/patent family applications and has participated in 40+ panels and invited talks. His current research interests include E2E network slicing, RAN and Core Network architecture evolution, AI-native networks, and 6G system architecture design and analysis.
Takehiro Nakamura
Mr. Takehiro Nakamura joined NTT Laboratories in 1990 and currently serves as Chief Standardization Officer at NTT DOCOMO, Inc. With extensive experience in R&D and standardization, he has played a pivotal role in advancing radio and network technologies—including W-CDMA, HSPA, LTE/LTE-Advanced, 5G, and 6G—while fostering inter-industry collaboration.
Since 1997, Mr. Nakamura has actively contributed to standardization activities in ARIB, ITU, and 3GPP, serving as Vice Chair and Chair of 3GPP TSG-RAN from 2005 to 2013. He has been instrumental in promoting and accelerating 5G and 6G both in Japan and globally, as a leading member of the 5G Mobile Promotion Forum, Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium, and ITS Info-communications Forum in Japan.
Currently, he leads several projects on Local 5G, millimeter-wave, and 6G within the XG Mobile Promotion Forum (XGMF). He also serves as a board member of 5G-ACIA and as a sub-leader of the Human Augmentation Consortium.
Alain Mourad
Dr. Alain Mourad is Senior Director and Head of Wireless Labs Europe at InterDigital, where he leads advanced wireless research and innovation with a strong focus on global standardisation. He actively contributes to international research and standards bodies, shaping next-generation wireless technologies. Dr. Mourad has held senior leadership roles at InterDigital, Samsung Electronics, and Mitsubishi Electric, as well as within global organisations including ETSI and WWRF. A prolific inventor and recognised thought leader, he has received multiple industry and corporate awards. He serves on the ETSI Board and chairs the ETSI ISAC Industry Specification Group. He holds engineering and doctoral degrees in telecommunications from the University of Rennes 1 and IMT Atlantique, France.
Patrik Rugeland
Patrik Rugeland is a Master Researcher at Ericsson Research, Stockholm Sweden. He received his M.Sc. in engineering physics in 2009 and Ph.D. in applied physics in 2013 from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. In 2014 he joined Ericsson Research, Stockholm and worked on standardization and concept development for LTE-Advanced and NR with a focus on radio network architecture and protocols towards 3GPP RAN2 and RAN3. In 2019, he started on 6G research and was the Technical Manager for the Hexa-X project during 2021-2022 before joining Hexa-X-II as Technical Manager during 2023-2025. He currently holds more than 90 patents in the area and is the co-editor for the 6G books ‘Towards Sustainable and Trustworthy 6G: Challenges, Enablers, and Architectural Design’ and ‘6G to Build a Sustainable Future’. He is currently the leader for the 6G-IA Vision and Societal Challenges WG.
Diego R. López
Dr. Diego Lopez joined Telefonica in 2011 as a Senior Technology Expert, and he is currently in charge of the Technology Exploration activities within the CDO Unit. Before joining Telefónica, Diego spent some years in the academic sector, dedicated to research on digital identity, computational intelligence and network services, and took the opportunity to earn his PhD addressing linguistic models back in 2000. He was appointed member of the High-Level Expert Group on Scientific Data Infrastructures by the European Commission.
Diego is currently focused on applied research in network infrastructures, with a special emphasis on quantum communications and data infrastructures. Diego is an ETSI Fellow and chairs the ETSI Technical Committee on Data Solutions.
Apart from this, Diego is a more than acceptable Iberian ham carver, and extremely fond of seeking and enjoying comics, and good discussions on any (in)appropriate matter.
Elif Uysal
Elif Uysal is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Middle East Technical University (METU) and the founder of FRESHDATA Technology. She received the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 2003, the S.M. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999 and the B.S. degree from METU in 1997. From 2003-05 she was a lecturer at MIT, and from 2005-06 she was an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University (OSU). Her research interests are at the junction of communication and networking theories. Dr. Uysal was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 2022 for “pioneering contributions to energy-efficient and low-latency communications”. She is a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, and of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, a recipient of the IEEE/ACM INFOCOM2026 Test of Time Paper Award, Selçuk Yaşar Award (2025), ERC Advanced Grant 2024, and named among IEEE Comsoc N2Women “Stars in Computer Networking and Communications” in 2024. Dr. Uysal received the TUBITAK BIDEB National Pioneer Researcher Grant 2020 and 2025, Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy of Turkey, IBM Faculty Award, the Turkish National Science Foundation Career Award, an NSF Foundations on Communication research grant, the MIT Vinton Hayes Fellowship, and the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. She has been serving as the Chair of the METU Parlar Foundation for Education and Research since 2022. Elif is an inventor on more than 20 patents, with emphasis on Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication, and IEEE Trans. on Information Theory.
