Gothenburg, Sweden – While much of the world is still upgrading to 5G, a fast-growing lab at Chalmers University of Technology is already stress-testing the network that will not arrive until 2030.
Guided by the European Commission’s flagship 6G programmes and backed by more than SEK 100 million in recent grants, Chalmers has quietly become one of the continent’s most influential hubs for next-generation mobile research.
100× faster than 5G – and built on AI
“6G is not just a faster radio,” explains Tommy Svensson, Professor of Communication Systems and scientific coordinator of Chalmers’ 6G projects.
“It is a platform where artificial intelligence, sensing and positioning are baked into the network from day one.”
Svensson’s team is targeting peak data rates that are roughly one hundred times higher than today’s 5G, combined with sub-millisecond latency and centimetre-level positioning accuracy.
Those figures are not academic wish-lists; they are already being validated in hardware prototypes that combine Ericsson’s latest base-station radios with Chalmers-designed antenna arrays and AI control software.
From hologram calls to robot co-workers
The performance leap is what enables the use-cases now shown to policy makers and industry partners:
- Holographic tele-presence: life-size, 3-D figures projected in real time with no visible delay.
- Collaborative robots: machines that react to human gestures within five milliseconds, allowing true co-working on an assembly line.
- Internet of Senses: immersive shopping or remote medical examinations that transmit not only sight and sound but also haptics and even scent.
“These are not concept videos,” says Svensson.
“We have end-to-end test beds running in our anechoic chambers today.”
Hexa-X-II: Europe’s blueprint for 2030
Chalmers is the largest Swedish academic partner in Hexa-X-II, the EU-funded flagship that will hand the telecom industry its first complete 6G specification by 2025.
The project unites 46 partners – from Ericsson and Nokia to Sony and Vodafone – and is explicitly charged with making Europe the global leader when commercial licences are auctioned around 2030.
New money, new talent
In December 2024 the Swedish Research Council awarded Svensson’s group SEK 28 million for the four-year 6G-NTN-E project.
The grant will add satellite and high-altitude platforms to the terrestrial grid, promising seamless coverage from city centres to the Arctic tundra.
PhD cohorts have doubled in two years; the university’s master’s course “6G Systems and AI” is already capped at 120 students per year.
“We know what 6G must become”
Svensson leans over a rack of translucent circuit boards glowing turquoise in the lab’s subdued light.
“We have now mapped what 6G should be able to do, and we have the technical solutions,” he says.
“The next step is for industry to turn it into products.
If everything proceeds on schedule, the first commercial 6G networks will go live in 2030 – exactly a decade after the first 5G base stations lit up.”
Until then, the quiet hum inside Chalmers’ labs is the sound of the future being assembled one line of code and one antenna at a time.
Closing note: What Actually Changes?
5G is still spreading—343 operators in 126 countries now offer at least one commercial 5G service, up from just 50 launches in 2019 (GSA 2024).
Yet the next chapter is already being written. 5G will not disappear; it will evolve into 5G-Advanced (3GPP Release 18 and beyond), which folds AI and machine-learning tools into the radio and core to push peak rates higher and shave a few more milliseconds off latency.
6G, however, is not a better 5G—it is a different species.
| Aspect | 5G / 5G-Advanced | 6G |
|---|---|---|
| Core design | Network + optional AI/ML add-ons | AI-native from the silicon up |
| Peak data rate | Up to 20 Gbps in 5G-A | Target 1 Tbps (≈ 50–100× leap) |
| Latency | ~1 ms in ideal 5G-A | < 0.1 ms |
| Positioning | Meter-level | Centimetre-level |
| New spectrum | mmWave & sub-7 GHz | Sub-THz (100–300 GHz) plus optical bands |
| Built-in sensing | None | Integrated sensing & communication (ISAC) |
| Energy per bit | 10× better than 4G | 10× better than 5G |
| Trust & security | Patch-wise | End-to-end post-quantum protection |
| Typical use cases | Enhanced mobile broadband, private 5G, basic URLLC | Holographic presence, digital twin of the physical world, real-time tele-operation, pervasive human–robot collaboration |
In short, 5G-Advanced will make today’s networks faster and smarter. 6G will turn the network itself into a distributed computer that senses, learns and responds in real time—always on, always aware, and orders of magnitude more capable.