6G will bring a new era in which billions of things, humans, and connected vehicles, robots and drones will generate Zettabytes of digital information. 6Gwill be dealing with more challenging applications, e.g., holographic telepresence and immersive communication, and meet far more stringent requirements. The 2030’s could be remembered as the start of the age of broad use of personal mobile robotics. 6G is the mobile network generation that will help us tackle those challenges. 6G will likely be a self-contained ecosystem of artificial intelligence. It will progressively evolve from being human-centric to being both human- and machine-centric. 6G will bring a near-instant and unrestricted complete wireless connectivity. A new landscape will also emerge for the enterprises, as a result of the convergence that 6G will allow in the fields of connectivity, robotics, cloud and secure and trustworthy commerce. This will radically reshape the way enterprises operate. In short, 6G will be one of the basic foundations of human societies of the future. To enable a sustainable progress for society, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it is crucial that 6G addresses effectively pressing societal needs, while delivering new functionalities. This (r)evolution must be in line with Europe’s primary societal values, in terms of e.g., privacy, security, transparency, and inclusiveness. Digital technologies are also becoming a critical and essential means of ensuring countries’ sovereignty. The development of Europebased 6G infrastructures and solutions is one of the keys to secure European sovereignty in critical technologies and systems.
The convergence of 6G with operation technologies raises the prospect of disassociating the location of manufacturing, industrial equipment, assets, and processes, from the actual location of the human operators. This will introduce unprecedented changes in our way of life as it is likely to redistribute the existing balance between urban and rural areas, potentially redefining the role of cities, by reversing the urbanisation trend. The COVID-19 pandemic has already amplified the social and economic significance of ICT infrastructure, in terms of e-working, e-commerce, and e-health. End-user engagement will be increasingly important for a smooth acceptance of new technologies like 6G. To ensure that 6G can be inclusive for all people across the world, it needs to be affordable and scalable, with a great coverage everywhere