Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, Minister of Communications and Development of North Eastern Region has inaugurated the International Bharat 6G Symposium 2025 at ninth edition of India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2025. Organised in collaboration with the Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA), the symposium marked a major milestone in India’s journey toward establishing itself as a key contributor to the global 6G ecosystem. It aims to foster international collaboration, accelerate research-to-market transitions, and drive sustainable and inclusive connectivity solutions aligned with India’s Bharat6G Vision 2030.
Commenting on the inauguration, Scindia said, “India has built a future-ready policy and a spectrum framework enabling timely allocation of even the terahertz band to support next-generation networks. From our indigenous 4G and 5G stacks to Open radio access network (RAN) prototypes for 6G, we are developing sovereign capabilities under the Product Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. The B6GA, uniting more than 80 organisations and 30 start-ups, is pioneering artificial intelligence (AI)-native networks and cross-sector applications in agriculture, healthcare, smart cities, and sustainability. Through the 6G Innovation Hexacon, our framework of six transformative pillars- immersive communications, massive communications, hyper-reliable low-latency connectivity, ubiquitous connectivity, AI-native networks, and integrated sensing and communications, India is not following the future, it is creating it.”
Meanwhile, Rajesh Kumar Pathak, director general, B6GA, said, “This year’s IMC theme ‘Innovate to Transform’ perfectly reflects our focus on leveraging 5G Advanced and 6G technologies to enhance connectivity while ensuring sustainability, inclusivity, and affordability. The 6G symposium brings together India’s leading experts and global partners to exchange insights and strengthen collaboration. Guided by the prime minister’s vision of India’s leadership in 6G, we are working towards an ambitious roadmap titled accelerating India’s 6G leadership to ensure our innovations are secure, resilient, and transformative.”
Delivering the welcome address, Professor David Koilpillai, chairperson, B6GA, underscored the importance of academia-industry-government collaboration in building an indigenous 6G ecosystem rooted in innovation, interoperability, and sustainability.
In addition, Vivek Badrinath, director general, GSMA, “India is shaping the future of connectivity. It is become a global producer of technology related equipment. Used cases of 6G will emerge quickly seeing how fast India rolled out 5G. 6G rollout will depend on focus areas such infrastructure, policy and partnership. 6G will be vital link to future connectivity needs. To unlock 6G potential, future focused policies are needed. Other key considerations include working with industry for long term transparency and regulation. AI is going to change the way networks are used. Digital future requires inclusivity and access for all.”
Further, Magnus Ewerbring, chief technology officer (CTO), APAC, Ericsson, said, “In our industry, we work with extremely long innovation cycles, sometimes spanning a decade or more. As we move toward 6G, we are not just preparing networks for what we know today, but for the unknown possibilities of 2040 and beyond. Our focus now is to validate technologies that will be mature by 2030, setting a forward-looking standard that can support future applications from AI and cloud-integrated services to low-power internet of thing (IoT) and extended reality (XR) experiences. The next generation of networks must be intelligent, energy efficient and capable of handling billions of interconnected devices seamlessly.”
Furthermore, Dr Mallik Tatipamula, CTO, Ericsson Silicon Valley, said, “Over the last two days, we have discussed many topics to align technology standards and policies for the 6G roadmap. Since 2024, when we had the last symposium, the team has made tremendous progress: the first major milestone being the US–India collaboration through Next G Alliance, and the second, the India–UK collaboration on 6G announced today. These events are creating enthusiasm and inspiration to bring countries together, because 6G means it has to be at planetary scale.”
Moreover, Dr Ulrich Dropmann, head, standardisation and industry environment, Nokia, said, “When diverse activities challenges and expertise converge, collaboration becomes the driving force for progress. The ongoing discussions with technical experts and partner institutions have helped us analyse, refine and align solutions that are both globally relevant and cost-effective. From addressing complexities in spectrum and network frameworks to finalising technical studies for CCC, every step brings us closer to creating systems that are sustainable, scalable and continuously improving for the future.”
Meanwhile, as part of the inauguration ceremony, the B6GA formalised collaborations through the exchange of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with NASSCOM and the European Satellite Agency, further strengthening international partnerships for research and technology exchange. The event also saw the release of four B6GA Working Group White Papers that outline India’s strategic vision and research directions in key areas such as spectrum roadmap for 6G in India, green and sustainable 6G in India, 6G data architecture, security and exposure framework for radio frequency (RF) sensing and AI in network evolution to 5G Advanced and 6G.
