Beyond 5G International Conference
Yusuke Maruyama

Deputy Director
Global Strategy Division Global Strategy Bureau
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

1. Introduction

In conjunction with the Beyond 5GPromotion Consortium, Japan’s Ministryof Internal Affairs and Communications(MIC) co-hosted the “Beyond 5GInternational Conference” over two days,
February 1 to 2, 2024, at the New Otani
Hotel (Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo) in a hybrid
format with online support.
Attending the conference were, fromJapan, Makoto Gonokami, President ofRIKEN (and Chairman of the Beyond
5G Promotion Consortium), Hideyuki
Tokuda, President of the National Instituteof Information and Communications
Technology (NICT), Susumu Yoshida,
Chairman of the Fifth Generation Mobile
Communications Promotion Forum,
Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University(Vice Chairman of the Consortium),
Akihiro Nakao, Professor, Graduate
School of Engineering, the University ofTokyo (Chairman of the International
C om m it te e of t he C on s or t iu m),
and representatives from industr y,
academia, and government, including
telecommunications carriers and vendors,
as well as many experts from overseas,
including government officials from theUnited States, South Korea, Finland,

Germany, the United Kingdom, Brazil,and India, vendors, and “Beyond 5G/6G”promotion organizations. It was evident
from the conference that expectations forBeyond 5G are growing both domesticallyand internationally and momentum toward
the realization of Beyond 5G is increasing.
Welcoming a total of about 260 attending
participants and 1080 online participants,
the two-day meeting was a great success.

2. I nitiatives by industry,
academia, and government
to achieve “Beyond 5G”

In his opening remarks, Chairman
Gonokami of the Beyond 5G Promotion
Consortium, emphasized the importanceof international collaboration concerning
information and telecommunications andpromotion of research and developmentof adv a nced sem iconduc tors, A I,
quantum computing, and next-generation
communication technologies in a unified
and interrelated manner. He also delivereda strong message about his desire to expand
the circle of international collaboration forthe promotion of Beyond 5G around theworld.
Following the opening remarks,
in the government session, Ma rk■ Figure 1: Opening speech by Makoto
Gonokami, President of RIKEN

10New Breeze Summer 2024

Cullinane, Director of Bilateral andRegiona l A ffa irs, Cyberspace andDigital Policy Bureau, U.S. Departmentof State, explained that Beyond 5G/6G
is reliable and safe, and he pointed outthat Beyond 5G/6G networks must be
open and interoperable and introduced
a project to support the deployment ofOpen RAN in Palau through Japan-U.S.
cooperation. Kyeongrae Cho, Director ofInnovation Network Team, Ministry of
Science and ICT (MSIT), South Korea,
explained the “K-Network 2030” strategy
formulated in February 2023 and theareas that R&D will focus on towardcommercialization of 6G. Laura Eiro,Director-General of the Data, Safetyand Security Department, Ministry ofTransport and Communications, Finland,
explained the importance of security,sustainability, and standardization inregard to Beyond 5G/6G technologies.
As for the development of Beyond 5G/6G
technology, Tina K lüwer, DirectorGeneral of Directorate 5 - Research forTechnological Sovereignty and Innovation,Federal Ministr y of Education andResearch (BMBF), Germany, emphasized
the needs, sustainability, and resilienceand safety of digital systems and networks.

■ Figure 2: L ecture by Director Mark Cullinane ofthe U.S. Department of State

In addition to that emphasis, she gave apresentation on the promotion of joint
research and development between Japanand Germany.
Major international vendors thengave presentations on their initiatives andvisions. Magnus Ewerbring, Ericsson’s
CTO for Asia-Pacific, explained thatthe innovation that continues to buildand expand 5G networks will be utilized
for the future standardization of Beyond
5G/6G. Dr. Wen Tong, CTO of Huawei
Wireless, introduced how to design 6G
networks in the coming AI era. PeterVetter, President of Bell Labs Core
Research, Nokia, gave a presentation onthe importance of placing 6G networks
as a main pillar complementing the use ofAI and cloud computing. Dr. John Smee,
Senior Vice President of Engineering at
Qualcomm, explained that the company
must consider how 6G systems should bebuilt in consideration of lessons learned
from investments in 5G.
As for presentations from domestic
vendors, Nozomu Watanabe, Corporate
Executive of NEC Corporation, spoke
about Living Lab’s efforts throughindustry-university co-creation withuniversities; Mototaka Taneya, Executive
Managing Officer, CTO, Head of R&D,
Sharp Corporation, spoke about the
spread of Beyond 5G in the world andSharp’s efforts in response to that spread;and Shingo Mizuno, Corporate Executive
Off icer EV P, Vice Head of System
Platform Business (in charge of NetworkBusiness), Fujitsu Ltd., spoke about the useof AI and efforts to achieve openness forthe transition to 6G.
At the end of the first day, Seizo
Onoe, Director of the Telecommunication

Standa rdization Bureau of theInternational Telecommunication Union(ITU), took the stage and explained
the importance of worldwide outreachthrough standardization to bridge thegap between developed and developing
countries in regard to mobile networkingand the evolution of elemental technologies
regardless of generation.

3. Japan’s efforts toimplement Beyond 5G

At the beginning of the second day,
Hideyuki Tokuda, President of NICT,
gave a presentation on research anddevelopment concerning Beyond 5G/6G,
AI, quantum ICT, and cybersecurity,
testbed and research-grant initiatives,and international cooperation withGermany and France. From the Beyond
5G Promotion Consortium, Morio
Toyoshima, Director-General of the
Wireless Networks Research Center,
Network Research Institute, NICT,
spoke about the Scalability Working
Group of the International Committee
Te c h nolog y S ub c om m it te e ; Iw ao
Hosako, Executive Director of NICT’s
Beyond 5G R& D Promotion Unit,
talked about the subcommittee’s HighFrequency WG; and Takehiro Nakamura,
Chief Standardization Officer of NTT
Docomo, Inc., spoke about the White
Paper Subcommittee of the Committee forPlanning and Strategy.
After the above-described speeches,
representatives from domestic telecom­
munications carriers gave presentations
on their visions and efforts toward
implementing Beyond 5G. Sachiko
Oonishi, Executive Vice President andHead of Research and Development■ Figure 3: Lecture by Director Kyeongrae Cho ofMSIT of South Korea

Ma rket St rateg y Div ision, N T T,
explained about the Innovative OpticalWireless Network (IOWN) and NTT’s
version of a large-scale language model(LLM), called “tsuzumi,” that achieves
low power consumption. Toshikazu
Youkai, Chief Network Officer, Managing
Executive Officer, and Deputy General
Manager of Technology Sector, KDDICorporation, spoke about improving thequality of their robust telecommunications
infrastructure, the evolution of the power
to connect through partnering in Japan andoverseas, and efforts toward a digital twinin the 6G era. Tomohiro Sekiwa, SeniorVice President & CNO of SoftBank
Corporation, introduced the use of aerial
solutions concerning the Noto Peninsula
earthquake and the integration of AI intocommunications. Ryoji Osaka, Executive
Advanced Technolog y Engineering
Division Manager, Rakuten Mobile, Inc.
explained the use of Open RAN and nonterrestrial networks (NTN) as effective
disaster countermeasures.
In the government session, Yasuo
Tawara, Director-General of the Global
Strategy Bureau at the Ministry of Internal
Affairs and Communications, said that inaddition to supporting ultra-high-speed,large-capacity, low-latency, and numerous
connections as an extension of 5G, NICT’s
funds will support R&D in areas suchas optical networks and non-terrestrialnetworks (NTNs) with the aim of creatinga Beyond 5G network that is reliable, safe,autonomous, while consuming less power.
After that, Holly Creek, Acting Directorof Digital Infrastructure, Department forScience, Innovation & Technology, UK,introduced the spectrum policy basedon the UK’s “Wireless Infrastructure■ Figure 4: Lecture by Director Seizo Onoe of ITU
Telecommunications Standardization

New Breeze Summer 202411■ Figure 5: Lecture by Director-General Yasuo Tawaraof the Global Strategy Bureau, Ministry ofInternal Affairs and Communications

Strategy,” which was announced in April
2023. Hermano Tercius, Secretary ofTelecommunications of Brazil’s Ministryof Communications, gave a presentationon the status of 5G deployment in Brazil
as well as the goals of their 6G project.
Ravi A. Robert Jerard, Deputy DirectorGeneral (Standards-R&D-Innovation),
Department of Telecommunications,
Ministry of Communications, India,
introduced the use of security, AI andquantum computing in regard to Beyond
5G/6G.

4. Future outlook

For this international conference,
the Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium
invited representatives from overseas
6G-promotion organizations that havesigned a memorandum of cooperation.
David Young, Managing Director of Next
G Alliance in the USA, Colin Willcock,
Chairman of the Governing Board
Europe’s 6G Smart Networks and Services
Industry Association (6G-IA), and Pathak

Rajesh Kumar, Director-General of India’s
Bharat 6G Alliance, each took the stage
to discuss initiatives in each country andregion and share the status of cooperationin various industries around the world.
In addition, moderated by Professor
Nakao of the Universit y of Tokyo
Graduate School and Chair of the Beyond
5G Promotion Consortium InternationalCommittee, a panel discussion was held todiscuss expectations for 6G initiatives andcollaborations around the world.
Professor Matti Latva-aho, Universityof Oulu, and Director for Finland’s 6G
Flagship, Abhimanyu Gosain, SeniorDirector of Northeastern University’s
Wireless IoT Laboratory of PAWR (USA),and Professor Lee HyunWoo of Dankook
University’s 6G Forum (South Korea)
participated in the meeting and confirmed
the need for international collaborationand cooperation to efficiently promote
standardization of 6G technologies.
Professor Nakao also delivered amessage of international cooperation to■ Figure 7: P anel discussion facilitated byProfessor Nakao of the University ofTokyo Graduate School

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■ Figure 6: S peech by Holly Creek, Acting
Director, Department for Science,
Innovation & Technology, UKestablish values that can be shared acrosscountries.
In closing the two-day conference,
Susumu Yoshida, Chairman of the Fifth
Generation Mobile Communications
Promotion Forum, expressed his hopefor further strengthening of international
collaboration on future R&D of Beyond
5G and its future popularization anddeployment.
At the Beyond 5G International
Conference, in addition to discussing
the further development and deploymentof 5G, the participants shared theirrecognition of the need for longterm industr y-academia-government
collaboration—ranging from researchof elemental technologies to social
implementat ion a nd innov at ion—for promoting Beyond 5G, and theyc on f i r me d t he i r c om m it me nt tointernational cooperation.
Note: The official posts of the “Beyond 5G Promotion
Consortium” and “5th Generation Mobile Promotion Forum”
are valid as of February 2024.

■ Figure 8: Closing remarks by Susumu Yoshida,
Chairman of the Fifth Generation Mobile
Communications Promotion Forum