The home of ajoblanco and campero, Málaga served as a host of thousands of researchers, operators, vendors and standards experts during the latest edition of EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026! Between 2 to 5 June, the event, a longtime fixture of the European telecommunications calendar, showcased another year of evolution and progress of 6G technologies. The numbers alone capture the scale of the gathering. The programme featured 195 papers across seven tracks, with 40 papers on AI/ML for communications alone, alongside tutorials, special sessions, workshops, convened sessions and keynotes. And one of those presentations included the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.
It is precisely in the movement from research vision to standardisation and deployment where the contributions of the Datacom Industry Association (DIA) and the NetworldEurope communities matter most. At the Summit, Dirk Trossen, Secretary General of the DIA, presented the key chapter of “Protocols and Communication Paradigms” as part of the overall Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), that also includes chapters on System View, Softwarisation & AI, Physical Innovations, and Future Emerging Technologies. The SRIA is an important collaborative effort that compiles the overall community-driven roadmap, articulating Europe’s priorities for the networks of the future.
The SRIA presentation involved a panel discussion of all chapter editors, positioning its relevance more poignantly: while we all take connectivity for granted through fibre, WiFi, and cellular technologies, there is a real danger that the importance of continuing innovation in this space will fade against the enormous and CAPEX- hungry investments that AI and HPC are currently seeing, particularly from public agencies.
According to Dirk Trossen, the audience perceived the DIA as one of the key platforms to advocate for the needed investment and continued education and formation of European excellence. Given that Europe has been and still is strong in the core technologies that make up the interconnection of people, AI agents, and computing resources, there is much to loose through short-sighted and poorly defined priorities with the bleak alternative of recovering lost talent in a few years time.
Presenting the SRIA at a venue like EuCNC places the agenda directly in front of the researchers, operators, SMEs and standardisation bodies whose work will determine whether Europe’s ambitions are realised, and it invites the feedback and alignment that keep the roadmap credible. It showcases a careful consideration by the community, made for the progress and ensuring the datacom contributors benefit from the upcoming roll-out of the European research FP10 programme.
What made EuCNC genuinely relevant this year was the shift in framing. The discussion is no longer only about faster radios, wider bandwidths or new spectrum bands. The focus now shifted to how networks become more intelligent, more resilient, more sustainable, and overall useful to society and industry, as it was evident in the presentations of the two industry speakers: Cayetano Carbajo Martín (Telefónica, Spain), who spoke about transforming telecom networks from infrastructure into intelligent platforms, and Magnus Frodigh (Ericsson Research, Sweden), who explored the idea of a 6G/AI intelligent fabric for tomorrow’s society. The European dimension ran throughout, as the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking continues to play a major role in shaping Europe’s 6G research landscape, with many projects now moving from concepts towards trials, platforms and standardisation input.
Through its leadership in creating an important input into the future research agenda for networking, the DIA has positioned itself in the heart of the needed discussion on future investments.
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