This week, Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) announced that Apple has joined its Next G Alliance. The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) launched the group last month, with backing from the top US and Canadian operators including Ericsson and Nokia. Its main intention is to “establish North American preeminence in the 5G evolutionary path and 6G development.”
Apple joins industry group and starts working towards 6G
The Cupertino tech giant is one of 11 new members of the group alongside Charter, Cisco, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Keysight Technologies, LG, Mavenir, MITRE, and VMware.
In a statement, ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller said:
“Our Founding Members represent leading industry stakeholders driving innovation in the mobile ecosystem. As part of the Next G Alliance, they demonstrate their commitment to setting the course to advance North American mobile technology leadership into the future.”
Notably absent from the group are Huawei and ZTE, who are restrained from joining as founding members “if they have been barred from federal contracts by agencies within the US government”, according to ATIS CEO Susan Miller.
As per the announcement, the work of the group “will encompass the full lifecycle of research and development, manufacturing, standardization and market readiness.”
The group will meet for the first time next week, on November 16. The group is also made up of major US carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile as well as international operators and vendors like Bell Canada, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm, Facebook, Microsoft, and more.
Apple has only just added 5G support to its iPhone lineup with the launch of its iPhone 12 lineup. All models of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lineup support mmWave 5G in the United States, and sub-6GHz 5G elsewhere.
In September, AT&T revealed that the carrier is already working on 6G technology, though it’s likely that the new generation of wireless connectivity won’t be available for years to come.
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