Industry Thought Leadership

Expectations on spectrum resources that the Industry uses have dramatically increased as the global digital economy continues its metamorphosis, with artificial intelligence now being a central catalyst. Decisions around spectrum are no longer only about availability or bandwidth blocks, but about how value is created, measured, and sustained. This especially applies to the Upper 6 GHz (U6) spectrum; a precious, contiguous range of frequencies from 6.425 GHz to 7.125 GHz that promise a new capacity layer for cellular ambitions, a new wireless experience for wireless local area networks, and cost efficiencies and prospects of innovation for various digital ecosystems.

The Upper 6 GHz spectrum provides the right balance of coverage and capacity for both today and tomorrow, and thus is a strategic asset that requires ever clearer regulatory direction and coordinated ecosystem development.

The U6 GHz spectrum fits into the practical requirements of modern digital systems and to national digital outcomes in some unique ways. In this context, this contiguous spectrum needs to be approached as a finite national asset with allocations justified by measurable and strategic value drawn from every single megahertz. This is especially true in the current AI contexts, since the U6 GHz spectrum can accelerate AI activity, and AI-driven services depend on continuous data flows, interaction between cloud and edge environments, and reliable connectivity for both human users and machines.

U6 GHz for Infrastructure, AI, and Economy
While U6 GHz can support the creation of new digital services, for example, telemedicine and immersive education, its deeper value lies in how it supports the operational requirements of the AI economy. AI systems increasingly depend on continuous data exchanges, distributed processing, and real-time interaction between cloud, edge, and terminal devices.

Upper 6 GHz offers the scale and flexibility needed to support these requirements across multiple environments, and its contiguous structure ensures that the value of each portion of spectrum can be fully realized. By efficiently leveraging all 700 megahertz, networks can support the high-throughput, low-latency demands of AI-driven services and distributed workloads. In scientific research settings, the spectrum can enable more collaborative and data-intensive experimentation. In industrial and public-sector contexts, it can support AI-driven operations that depend on reliable and responsive connectivity. Over time, U6 GHz can act as an accelerator of scientific discovery and enabling more ambitious experimentation across industries.

What this does is reframe this valuable spectrum not merely as another connectivity input, but as an infrastructure layer that, which, by enabling unprecedented bandwidth, capacity density, and spectrum re-use capabilities, lends new depth to how intelligence is created, shared, and applied cross the digital-age economy.

As sovereign AI becomes a strategic priority for many nations within and beyond the SA-ME-NA region, U6 GHz takes on added significance. Spectrum that supports national-scale AI ecosystems enables countries to build, train, and deploy AI systems aligned with their economic and societal objectives. Upper 6 GHz provides the underlying capacity needed to support distributed AI workloads across public and private sectors, ensuring that innovation remains locally anchored while globally competitive.

Upper 6 GHz provides the underlying capacity needed to support distributed AI workloads across public and private sectors, ensuring that innovation remains locally anchored while globally competitive

Beyond raw capacity, U6 GHz offers low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity that is essential for edge AI applications, real-time analytics, and industrial IoT integration. This allows for the deployment of AI in critical infrastructure, national research networks. In effect, U6 GHz becomes not just a connectivity layer but a strategic AI infrastructure enabler, supporting sovereign innovation, digital resilience, and cross-industry economic growth.

Assuming that in most markets the overarching consideration is human empowerment and not control, the U6 Ghz and AI synergy could allow for AI applications to be deployed closer to users, fostering edge innovation, real-time decision-making, and locally tailored and citizen-centric services. This synergy can directly fortify cross-sector collaboration, linking public services, private enterprises, and research institutions, while ensuring that data and computational resources remain accessible, secure, and locally governed. In effect, U6 GHz becomes not just a connectivity layer but a new infrastructure foundation for empowering individuals, communities, and businesses to leverage AI in ways that are equitable and societally beneficial.

Maximizing U6 GHz Value
Globally, approaches to U6 GHz allocation remain fragmented. Some countries have designated the band for IMT use, others for WLAN, and some have revised their strategies over time as market conditions and policy priorities evolved. While these choices often reflect legitimate national objectives, fragmentation does limit scale, delays innovation, and reduces the value that can be extracted from each megahertz by all nations. Alignment across regions, with active representation from both the cellular and WLAN ecosystems, can overcome standardization issues, simplify device and network interoperability, unlock economies of scale, and accelerate time-to-market for advanced services, while still allowing countries the flexibility to reflect their specific development priorities, including those directly relating to demonstrating progress on the global Sustainable Development Agenda.

For telecom operators, the relevance of Upper 6 GHz spectrum will increasingly be defined by how effectively spectrum can be translated into services that support real operational needs within the ICT industry as well as across adjacent sectors. Achieving this requires careful alignment between cellular and WLAN ecosystems, ensuring that data flows seamlessly across devices, networks, and AI-enabled systems. This is especially true since WLAN (e.g., Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7) can no longer be perceived solely as a household connectivity medium but needs to be understood as an enterprise-grade infrastructure for meeting complex, emerging communication and data-flow requirements. Only through such coordination can the full potential of U6 GHz be realized for cross-industry innovation.

To fully realize the promise of Upper 6 GHz, four priorities should be objectively addressed in parallel. From a regulatory perspective, spectrum policy must inherently remain closely aligned with national ICT visions, with decisions guided by disciplined evaluation of how economic, social, and innovation value can be extracted from every megahertz of the contiguously 700 megahertz available in the U6 GHz spectrum. This means designing frameworks that prioritize allocations based on national digital objectives, and which encourage flexible use across cellular and WLAN networks, and provide clear guidance to reduce uncertainty for investors, telecom operators, and technology providers. In this way, each portion of spectrum contributes measurable value rather than remaining underutilized.

On the technology side, progress in U6 GHz-compatible chipsets, device interoperability, and network processing capability is critical to realizing per-megahertz value in practice. Seamless operation across the U6 GHz band, optimized hardware for low-latency, high-throughput AI applications, and interoperability between devices and networks all combine to unlock the spectrum’s full potential.

Telecom operators, meanwhile, need to unearth new possibilities and translate them into real-world outcomes and use-case scenarios through service design and deployment, again in line with their respective national priorities, socio-economic dynamics, and both regional and global trends in digital service adoption. By leveraging contiguous spectrum efficiently, coordinating cellular and WLAN deployments, and prioritizing latency-sensitive or AI-enabled applications, operators can ensure that U6 GHz drives tangible improvements across industries and varying operational environments.

Industry associations and standardization bodies, such as the SAMENA Telecommunications Council and the World WLAN Application Alliance, have a powerful, facilitating role in drawing value out of the U6 GHz allocations. Fragmentation in spectrum allocation and technical approaches increases complexity for the entire value-chain. Collaborative efforts focused on harmonization, shared frameworks, and common technical assumptions can reduce friction, accelerate deployment, and improve return on investment.

Processes and approaches within the broader digital and increasingly AI-driven ecosystems require calibration as well, to fully capture value from both technologies and spectrum resources. Coordination among industry players, standardization bodies, and policymakers enables harmonization of technical approaches, shared best practices, and interoperability between networks and devices. This collective effort allows wireless transmission technologies to deliver on expectations, AI-driven services to scale effectively, and cross-industry collaborations to identify implementable approaches and yield outcomes, and it ensures that both existing and emerging human experiences and machine-scale interactions benefit from the spectrum’s capabilities, and ultimately benefit the human society.

Industry associations and standardization bodies, such as the SAMENA Telecommunications Council and the World WLAN Application Alliance, have a powerful, facilitating role in drawing value out of the U6 GHz allocations. Fragmentation in spectrum allocation and technical approaches increases complexity for the entire value-chain. Collaborative efforts focused on harmonization, shared frameworks, and common technical assumptions can reduce friction, accelerate deployment, and improve return on investment. These collective actions, which such industry bodies can enable, allow spectrum to become an enabler of cross-industry collaboration rather than a constraint.

What to Take Forward
The way Upper 6 GHz is deployed and leveraged today will shape the next phase of the digital economy. With WRC‑23 having formally allocated this band for IMT use, countries have a unique opportunity to extract maximum value from U6 GHz contiguous spectrum, aligning cellular and WLAN ecosystems, and enabling national-scale AI applications. Decisions made now on network deployments, cross-industry use -cases, and technology enablement, in general, will influence discussions at WRC‑27 – which is expected to delve into next‑generation satellite broadband and direct-to-device connectivity, IMT expansion into other bands, protecting scientific and passive, exploration services, and ensuring equitable access to evolving high‑capacity bands.”

The Upper 6 GHz spectrum provides the right balance of coverage and capacity for both today and tomorrow, and thus is a strategic asset that requires ever clearer regulatory direction and coordinated ecosystem development. By focusing on practical use, measurable outcomes, and ecosystem coordination, Upper 6 GHz can become a platform that not only supports immediate connectivity needs but also accelerates AI innovation, sovereign infrastructure and AI capabilities, strengthens industrial digital capabilities, and which can position nations for long-term digital and socio-economic competitiveness.