By Rebecca Stone, Senior Correspondent

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has finalised the submission templates that governments, vendors and research bodies will use to propose 6G radio interface technologies, the agency confirmed. The move formalises the front end of the IMT-2030 process — the UN agency's successor framework to 5G — and converts an abstract roadmap into a procedure with paperwork.

Until now, prospective contributors knew the destination but not the paperwork required to file. A formal template is, in ITU's own procedural language, the green light for the next stage: receiving candidate submissions from industry, academia and national bodies worldwide.

What does the ITU actually publish?

The templates are technical documents. They specify how proponents should describe candidate air-interface technologies, evaluation methodologies, spectrum scenarios and performance targets. Without an approved template, a proposal cannot be logged in the IMT-2030 pipeline.

The next stage opens the door to formal submission windows. From here, the agency will receive, evaluate and, over years, recommend the most credible radio interface designs to its membership.

How far is this from a usable 6G standard?

Considerably far. A completed ITU radio recommendation typically takes eight to ten years from the start of its technical work, and IMT-2030 only entered its early study phase recently. The submission templates mark the moment when proposals start arriving on ITU's desk, not the moment when a radio interface exists in silicon.

Compare that with 5G. ITU's IMT-2020 study phase started around 2012; the formal recommendation completed in 2020; first commercial 5G networks launched the same year. The 6G cycle is following a similar shape, possibly compressed by a year or two.

Anyone describing the announcement as "6G is here" is conflating the standardisation schedule with the technology itself.

What is missing from the announcement?

The public summary does not name a submission deadline, a target completion year for IMT-2030, the evaluation thresholds, or which spectrum bands will be studied. Those decisions sit in separate ITU-R working party outputs expected over the coming months.

Vendor statements that claim a fixed 2030 commercial launch should be treated as marketing until those documents appear. The public ITU-R process has historically taken longer than the most optimistic vendor forecast.

Where does spectrum fit?

The 5G era opened with operators leaning on sub-6 GHz mid-band and the 24–40 GHz mmWave range, with mixed commercial results. MmWave 5G in particular has rarely been deployed at scale outside the United States.

6G research papers, by contrast, are converging on three candidate ranges: sub-7 GHz for coverage, 7–24 GHz for capacity, and sub-THz frequencies above 100 GHz for short-range extreme throughput. None of those bands has been allocated by the World Radiocommunication Conference for 6G use.

Who writes the detailed specifications?

ITU sets the framework and high-level requirements. The detailed specifications will pass to industry bodies — most prominently 3GPP, the partnership that produced 5G NR — and to IEEE for adjacent paths. The templates being finalised now are the input format for ITU's eventual request to those organisations.

A vendor that promises "6G compliance by 2028" is several institutional steps ahead of where the process actually stands.

What should operators and equipment makers do now?

For mobile operators, the next twelve months are a watching brief rather than a procurement cycle. 5G standalone core build-outs remain unfinished across most major markets, and the business case for 5G-Advanced features such as network slicing is still being written.

Equipment vendors with large R&D budgets — Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Qualcomm and a handful of Chinese and Korean challengers — will file proposals into the ITU pipeline. The technical and political disputes over AI-native air interfaces, sub-THz bands and energy-efficiency targets are only beginning.

The next milestone to watch is the publication of the IMT-2030 evaluation criteria and timeline by ITU-R Working Party 5D, expected within twelve to eighteen months. Until then, "6G" is a procedural term rather than a product.