Sensing, physical AI and spectrum lead the 6G business case
In sum – what to know:
- A sensing-first revenue path – Keysight’s Stephen Douglas said integrated sensing has probably become the dominant early use case, with a subscription service planned for 2027.
- Named the customer first – Ericsson’s Preeti Nagarajan and BT’s Rana Kamill argued operators should establish the problem and who pays for it before setting network requirements.
- The LA28 timing problem – 3GPP’s approved Release 21 functional freeze falls in December 2028, after the Games, so any 2028 showcase is pre-commercial by definition.
6G monetization will depend on selling business outcomes and intelligent automation rather than connectivity alone, according to panelists at the RCR Wireless 6G Forum. That means moving beyond the speed, latency and capacity pitch used for 5G, and giving customers services they couldn’t get on the previous generation from day one.
There’s broad agreement on the candidates, but considerably less certainty about which will make money. Rana Kamill, network architecture and standards senior manager at BT, said the Third Generation Partnership Project’s SA1 services group had consolidated hundreds of proposed use cases after an estimated close to 1,000 contributions. Integrated sensing, digital twins, physical AI and extended reality are among the leading possibilities, but the revenue-generating winners remain unconfirmed.
The panel’s answer was to start proving the business case before 6G arrives. Operators can use 5G-Advanced, the interim stage between 5G and 6G, to test sensing services, AI-driven automation and early physical AI applications. Those deployments would provide evidence of customer demand and measurable returns, rather than requiring operators to build another network and search for a justification afterward.
Integrated sensing is the early revenue bet
Integrated sensing and communication, or ISAC, allows a radio network to detect objects such as drones, vehicles and people while also carrying data. Stephen Douglas, head of strategic thought leadership at Keysight, said it has probably become the dominant use case in early testing so far, with particular attention on higher-fidelity drone detection, tracking and classification, as well as the management of low-altitude flight corridors. Airports, security operators and defense organizations are among the potential customers, especially where dedicated radar systems are costly and not necessarily accurate.
Early 5G sensing can already support presence and movement detection, traffic flow analysis and crowd density estimation. Those applications don’t always need high-resolution imaging. Dependable detection and integration with a customer’s existing operational systems matter more at this stage, Douglas said, giving operators an opportunity to sell initial services before 6G is available. That groundwork has already been tested on a live crowd: Verizon and Samsung ran an AI-powered ISAC trial on commercial virtualized 5G infrastructure in Dallas in September 2026, producing density heatmaps without added cameras or radar.
The 6G roadmap would add wider bandwidth, denser antenna arrays and AI-native processing, meaning artificial intelligence built into the network’s operation from the outset. Together, those capabilities are expected to improve range resolution, or the network’s ability to distinguish objects at different distances. Douglas said that could take sensing from basic presence detection to high-resolution localization, three-dimensional mapping and potentially material characterization, which involves identifying properties of surfaces or objects. The commercial model would then be to establish sensing revenue on 5G and upsell customers as richer 6G services become available.
One public demonstration has already pointed in that direction. Douglas said Keysight worked with Verizon, Lockheed Martin, Astris AI, Nvidia and ODC on drone and unmanned aircraft detection using ISAC concepts over Verizon’s existing 5G spectrum. Pilots are scheduled for late 2026 and early 2027, with commercial availability planned as a subscription service in 2027. Those dates are plans rather than completed deployments, but they show how sensing could generate revenue without waiting for a full 6G rollout.
Digital twins offer a related opportunity. Kamill described them as virtual replicas of networks that allow operators to conduct deeper penetration testing, or authorized attempts to uncover security weaknesses, without risking damage to live infrastructure, while cautioning that there is only a level up to which they can go deep. That’s still a more concrete operational benefit than a general promise of better connectivity.
Business cases must come before the technology
A 6G business case can’t rest on smartphones alone, said Preeti Nagarajan, head of portfolio operations and future technologies at Ericsson’s Business Area Networks. With operator capital spending flat or declining, customers and partners expect stronger evidence before committing to another long investment cycle. The uncertainty around winning use cases makes that evidence especially important, even where there’s consensus around sensing and physical AI.
Kamill argued that 6G should reverse the sequence often followed during 5G rollouts. Instead of building the technology and constructing a business case around it, operators should identify the problem, establish who will pay for a solution and develop the network requirements accordingly. The goal is also to evolve from 5G in a commercially sustainable way, avoiding another expensive network rebuild.
Physical AI illustrates why that process needs to start early. The term covers AI systems that control machines in the real world, including collaborative robots, autonomous drones, connected industrial equipment and elder-care robots. Nagarajan said these applications will require deterministic latency, meaning a predictable maximum delay rather than merely a good average, along with high reliability, precise positioning and synchronized communications for machines that need to act together.
They’ll also generate more uplink traffic, or data sent from devices into the network. Nagarajan said Ericsson expects uplink traffic to grow threefold by 2031 compared with 2025 under its medium AI-adoption scenario, driven by AI applications broadly rather than physical AI alone. Preparing for that demand should begin with 5G-Advanced rather than wait for 6G.
Equipment life cycles create another constraint. Jaydee Griffith, managing director of the Next G Alliance, an ATIS initiative, said electric utilities expect smart meters to remain in service for 25 to 30 years, raising the prospect of 4G or even 5G networks needing to support installed devices for decades. Defense and military equipment can have similarly long cycles, said Mavrakis. Some verticals would adopt 6G on day one if low-end Reduced Capability, or RedCap, chips were available for internet-of-things devices, Griffith said. RedCap trades flagship performance for lower cost and complexity, making it better suited to sensors and meters than smartphones.
The standards framework is expanding in a way that reflects those broader requirements. Kamill pointed to the International Telecommunication Union’s capability wheel, which compares existing IMT-2020 capabilities with those expected for 6G. IMT-2020 is the standards framework underlying 5G. As Mavrakis noted, the framework’s usage scenarios have expanded from a triangle to a hexagon, IMT-2020’s three becoming six for IMT-2030; the capability targets are a separate list.
For operators, the return on investment will need to be expressed in the same terms. Nagarajan said measurable outcomes could include lower operational costs, better asset utilization, reduced energy consumption, and improved safety and security. The opportunity, Nagarajan said, “would be to make the network an active participant in intelligence creation.” Gigabits per second won’t be enough to make the case.
Spectrum, private networks, and the LA28 showcase
Spectrum remains the most immediate policy requirement. Griffith said a reliable spectrum pipeline is essential in every region and has been a particular focus in the United States. Governments will also shape 6G through their own procurement, given their role as major telecommunications customers.
Regional leadership shouldn’t be measured solely by patent counts, standards contributions or which country launches first, Griffith argued, framing the point as a personal view rather than the Alliance’s position. The more meaningful measure, he said, is which country or region gains the most economic benefit from deployment. That places further weight on understanding industry requirements before launch, rather than treating an early network switch-on as proof of success.
Private networks are likely to remain part of the picture. Heavily regulated industries such as electric utilities often want to own their infrastructure and may already hold spectrum allocations, making a wholesale move to public networks unlikely. US utilities already hold licensed 900 MHz spectrum, where the FCC opened the full 10 megahertz to broadband use in February, and Anterix is the largest holder. Griffith said there will be a role for private 6G networks, although the overlap between public and private network applications remains unclear.
Fixed wireless access, which delivers broadband to homes or businesses over cellular links, could provide another route. It has already proved successful on 5G: US operators accounted for more than 17 million 5G fixed wireless access connections in the first quarter of 2026, roughly 14% of home broadband subscriptions, according to Ookla. Douglas said 6G could add capacity and efficiency through frequency range three, a candidate range of upper-mid-band spectrum that WRC-27 is expected to consider for identification, and directional phased arrays. Those antenna systems steer radio beams electronically toward specific receivers. Early customer premises equipment, meaning the hardware installed at a customer’s site, could appear in 2028 demonstrators and target premium or industrial users before any nationwide deployment.
The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will nevertheless be too early for mature, large-scale commercial 6G. Kamill noted that the formal IMT-2030 process, which defines the next generation of international mobile telecommunications, is targeting the end of the decade, and 3GPP’s approved Release 21 timeline puts the functional freeze in December 2028, after the Games, with the first full 6G specification complete in March 2029. LA28 could instead demonstrate pre-commercial integrated sensing and AI-native network optimization in dense venues with global broadcast audiences and demanding logistics, Douglas said.
There is an industry effort aimed squarely at that window: NTIA’s Mission 6G 28 gathered 28 signed letters of intent in its first phase and is now narrowing participants toward a shared, neutral demonstration venue in Los Angeles.
There’s a precedent for that approach. South Korea’s Winter Olympics provided a 5G showcase before standardization was complete. But a credible LA28 demonstration would still require sufficiently mature standards, experimental spectrum licenses and early 6G devices. Douglas said those devices are more likely to be customer premises equipment or extended reality hardware, which covers augmented and virtual reality, than smartphones. The unresolved question, Griffith said, is who the showcase is meant to convince.
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