Thinknet 6G
From "5G Industrial Engineering" to "6G Human Environments"
As digitalization progresses, mobile communication has a crucial role to play in providing the communication infrastructure for society as a whole, from individual citizens to essential services. This infrastructure must provide highly available, high-performance communication for a wide range of requirements and applications for the benefit of mankind.
To ensure that all relevant stakeholders in Bavaria are involved in the research and development of 6G at an early stage, the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy has founded Thinknet 6G to create an agile ecosystem of industry players, research institutions, associations, innovators, start-ups and incubators.
The current generation of mobile communication - 5G - is the first to shift the focus away from individual end-user communication towards industrial applications such as advanced manufacturing (Industry 4.0), logistics, transportation and eHealth. The next generation - 6G - will further expand the capacity and speed of networks to enable applications with significantly higher networking requirements, such as real-time digital twins, fully autonomous driving or personal body area networks. 6G shifts the focus from machines to people and their interaction with the environment around them by supporting highly available, reliable and secure communication with a dynamic, intelligent infrastructure.
Each new generation of mobile technology takes around ten years to develop, implement and roll out. While 5G deployments are still underway, research for 6G has already begun. As 6G is expected to be launched around 2030, companies and research organizations need to start working on 6G immediately. The research and development of 6G technology, e.g. the new hardware for the new frequency spectrums, is expected to take several years.
The international standardization process will then take another 2 to 3 years, with product development and testing taking place in parallel and at the end of the 10-year cycle.
Thinknet 6G is part of Bayern Innovativ
- Building a vibrant ecosystem of 6G stakeholders in Bavaria, Germany, Europe and internationally
- Acting as a central point of contact and information for 6G topics and issues
- Stimulating networking and exchange between the relevant stakeholders to enable collaboration, cooperation and knowledge transfer
- Cooperation and networking with 6G organizations in other states and countries
- Supporting pre-competitive consensus building and mutual exchange
- Promoting the Thinknet 6G and its activities, for example through an annual 6G summit
- Providing expert input and support in defining calls for research funding
Thinknet 6G has defined six areas as initial technology focus areas that the community will address. These are:
- AL/ML-native communications
- New spectrum technologies
- The network as a multi-sensor
- Network customization
- Extreme and energy-efficient connectivity
- Security, data protection and trust
These technology focus areas describe areas that contain significant innovations and developments for 6G networks. 6G will comprehensively support the digital society and blur the boundaries between end devices, wired and wireless networks. This requires connecting the physical and digital worlds through precise sensors and actuators and automatically and intelligently adapting both services and the environment while providing sustainable, reliable, secure and ultra-low latency end-to-end communication over a heterogeneous network infrastructure.
The use cases for 6G require extreme bandwidth and latency requirements as they include applications such as holographic telepresence, millimeter-accurate positioning, precise control of medical devices, cooperating swarms of care robots or high-resolution 3D maps for autonomous vehicles. The detailed real-time synchronization between digital twins and their physical counterparts contributes to an unprecedented expansion of human mental capabilities.
The users of 6G technology, and thus the participants of Thinknet 6G, come from all areas of society that have a need or interest in digitization, including municipalities, education (schools and universities), healthcare, agriculture, administration, mobility, etc. They will use Thinknet 6G's information and networking opportunities to find out about 6G, contribute their requirements and network with experts. In addition, Thinknet 6G will serve as a central point of contact for political decision-makers in the field of cellular communication.
Partner and industry dates
| Date | Type | Topic | Location |
| 28. - 29. January 2025 | Conference | The European 5G Conference | Brussels |
| 28. - 30. January 2025 | Symposium | International Symposium on Joint Communications & Sensing | Finland/online |
| 11. - 12. February 2025 | Workshop | 6G Series Workshop by Hexa-X-II | online |
| 3. - 6. March 2025 | Trade Fair | Mobile World Congress 2025 | Barcelona |
| 14. - 15. May 2025 | Summit | IEEE 6G Summit 2025 | Dresden |
| 3. - 6. June 2025 | Summit | European Conference on Networks and Communications | Poznan (Polen) |
| 16. - 17. June 2025 | Summit | TechDays 2025 | Munich |
| 8. - 11. July 2025 | Summit | AI for Good Global Summit | Geneva (Switzerland) |
| 22. - 23. August 2025 | Forum | 5G Techritory 2025 | Riga (Latvia) |
| 11. - 13. November 2025 | Trade Fair | Africa Com | Kapstadt (South Africa) |