Verizon Bolsters 6G Innovation Forum with Industry Heavyweights

Verizon has expanded its 6G Innovation Forum (6GIF) by welcoming nine new members, including industry heavyweights Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, Intel, and NVIDIA. This move is part of Verizon's efforts to accelerate the development of next-generation wireless architectures.

The new members bring critical multi-disciplinary capabilities across cloud services, advanced silicon, and accelerated computing, among other areas. They will collaborate with founding members Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, Meta, and Qualcomm Technologies to unlock the full potential of 6G.

Verizon showcased recent successful field trials with Samsung and Qualcomm targeting Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) use cases. ISAC transforms the cellular network into a massive, distributed radar-like sensor without physical cameras. The companies explored how ISAC could support public safety, environmental awareness, and event management.

The trial with Samsung demonstrated AI-powered crowd density detection on a virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) for crowd detection. The network tracked the raw radio variations from six localized Samsung Galaxy smartphones to generate real-time crowd-density heatmaps.