The US is looking to its allies to make sure China doesn’t dominate the future of telecommunications. The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a partnership with 24 countries — including Australia, Germany, Japan, and the UK — aimed at coordinating strategies around 6G, which is expected to be designed to accommodate AI and could start replacing 5G in the 2030s.
The US’ National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce bureau responsible for telecoms, expects more countries to sign on, and has already had initial conversations with prominent private companies in partner nations that will drive 6G development, an NTIA official told Semafor. Some of the biggest non-Chinese firms that will benefit from 6G — such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung — aren’t American.
Washington is building the coalition ahead of a UN conference next year in Shanghai, where countries will discuss international standards for wireless networks. The US effort also aims to build market scale for vendors and supply chains from the democratic world ahead of the 6G buildout, the official said.
No one knows yet what exactly 6G will look like, but the US is surely eager to avoid the pitfalls of the 5G era, in which it spent years pushing allies to reject Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE, citing security concerns. The stakes are even higher in the AI era.