6G Spectrum Policy Issues Above 100 GHz

As 5G rollout is underway in many countries, R&D is also underway on its successor 6G and along with deliberations in International Telecommunication Union – Radiocommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-R) Working Party 5D (WP 5D) [1]. 6G will likely use both the existing approximately 50 5G frequency bands that range from 617 MHz to 48.2 GHz, not all of which are available in every country, as well as possible new bands above 100 GHz that have no commercial use at this time [2]. The bands above 100 GHz are attractive for high communications bit rate links because they potentially offer much greater bandwidths than the maximum 400 MHz contiguous bandwidth in any of the existing 5G bands. While bonding nonadjacent bands together for high bit rates has been done at lower bands, it is unclear yet whether this is practical for bandwidths greater than 400 MHz at frequencies above 100 GHz where there are large blocks of unused spectrum at present.