Ericsson completes pre-standard 6G over-the-air session in Texas

Ericsson completed a pre-standard 6G over-the-air session at its Plano, Texas headquarters, demonstrating cloud-hosted Large Language Model (LLM) processing, AI-driven robotics control, and real-time video streaming; the demonstration underscored long-term U.S. investment in research and manufacturing.

The company positioned the trial as aligned with U.S. government priorities around early research, global standards and forward-looking spectrum policy, and described 6G as a future layer of critical infrastructure for national security and economic competitiveness and for AI-driven developments.

The session used a trusted end-to-end architecture designed to be Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud native and included radio hardware, Radio Access Network (RAN) Compute, software-defined air interfaces, and cloud platforms. Ericsson said its software architecture was deployable on multiple hardware platforms, including central processing units and graphics processing units, and that the system emphasized optimized uplink, enhanced energy efficiency, and spectral utilization.

Technical parameters cited in the release included use of centimeter-wave spectrum in the 7 GHz range and a carrier bandwidth of 400 Megahertz (MHz). Ericsson reported the demonstration leveraged its radios, baseband platforms, and cloud-native software and noted ongoing contributions to 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Open RAN.

“Ericsson's 6G demonstration is an important milestone in next generation wireless innovation, enabled by American ingenuity,” said Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

“6G will be foundational to how artificial intelligence scales across society and will be critical to the national security, economic prosperity, and global competitiveness of the United States,” said Börje Ekholm, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ericsson. “Completing this world's first live 6G trial in the United States is a tangible proof point that advanced wireless innovation, manufacturing, and research is anchored here - supporting U.S. leadership in next-generation connectivity. We continue to lead innovation alongside the U.S. ecosystem, working with government, partners, operators, enterprises, academia, and startups.”

Ericsson said it operated more than 120 years in the United States, employed more than 6,000 people, RAN 12 Research and Development (R&D) centers, manufactured advanced 5G radios and RAN Compute at a 300,000-square-foot 5G USA Smart Factory in Lewisville, Texas with an investment of more than USD 150 million supporting more than 550 U.S. manufacturing jobs, and that it would continue expanding trials across additional spectrum bands, enable AI-native capabilities, collaborate with operators and chipset partners, and build on its U.S.-based manufacturing foundation to support future deployments.