BARCELONA – Mobile World Congress (MWC) saw Ericsson nail its 6G colors to the mast with a bevy of announcements, including trial deployments with Apple and 6G-facing ventures with Taiwanese and Turkish telecom operators.

The Ericsson stand at this year’s MWC event showcased a live demo with Apple of multi-radio access technology (RAT) spectrum sharing (MRSS) between 5G and 6G. The simulation used proof-of-concept technology running on an Ericsson base station operating in time division duplex (TDD) mid-band, with the aim of validating real-time MRSS interoperability and performance. Marie Hogan, head of 6G portfolio strategy at Ericsson's Business Area Networks, explained the solution is designed to aid communication service providers (CSPs) with streamlined 5G to 6G migration and coexistence, reducing resource waste and signaling overhead.

“We want to make sure that we can use the existing spectrum for 6G, so we have this spectrum sharing demo with Apple on mid-band spectrum exploring how efficiently you could add 6G to an existing spectrum in the network while minimizing the impact to the legacy 5G operations that are ongoing," Hogan said.

“So what you would see is a 5G network running, and then when you add a 6G prototype device, you can see that the impact is very, very low on the existing device.," Hogan continued. "So in 4G and 5G spectrum sharing, we had maybe 20 to 30% overhead. 4G is a not so lean design; 5G, on the other hand, is a very lean design and when we add 6G it's even leaner. So we expect possibly up to 10-times lower overhead, for example."

Hogan added spectrum sharing will be “very important as a mechanism” as a gradual introduction to 6G, with Apple and other Ericsson partners viewing now as the time to set 6G standards.

Those other partners include Qualcomm, which is working on 6G technical alignment with Ericsson, specifically regarding 3GPP 6G Release 20, as comprising a 400-megahertz component carrier with 30-kilohertz subcarrier spacing to explore orations in the 6 GHz to 8 GHz spectrum range.

Taiwan chipmaker Mediatek also held an MWC demo showing how 6G signals in the same spectrum range can meet the increased data requirements of AI and 6G-native devices such as smart glasses, integrating a user equipment (UE) prototype from the chipmaker comprising radios and baseband processing up to the IP layer, as coupled with an Ericsson radio access network (RAN).

Taiwan operator Chungwha Telecom took the opportunity of MWC 2026 to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Ericsson to drive both 5G-Advanced commercialization and AI-RAN deployments to galvanize 6G progress. The two firms had previously collaborated this year on what was said to be the first commercial deployment in Northeast Asia of Ericsson’s triple-band FDD massive multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) radio on live network, as used during Taipei New Year’s Eve celebration.

Turkcell also signed a similar MoU at the event, launching a dedicated 6G research and development program in Turkey.

“Apple, Qualcomm, Mediatek, and everybody else are interested to make sure we have the right specifications in place,” Hogan said regarding Ericsson’s partners at MWC.

The latest news from the Swedish giant followed a partnership with chipset manufacturer Intel, as covered by SDxCentral sister site DCD this week, alongside a successful 6G pre-standard over-the-air session at Ericsson's U.S. headquarters in Plano, Texas.