'Silicon Valley Future Communications Summit 2026' held in Mountain View

Over 100 leaders from global carriers, manufacturers, governments and academia attend

Three sessions cover AI-native 6G, satellite communications and hyper-connectivity

AI RAN, X-MIMO and D-MIMO among key 6G technologies demonstrated

6G network cooperation expanded with LG Uplus, Verizon and others

Samsung Electronics held a Partner Day event with global telecommunications industry partners in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, on Wednesday (local time). [Provided by Samsung Electronics]
Samsung Electronics held a Partner Day event with global telecommunications industry partners in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, on Wednesday (local time). [Provided by Samsung Electronics]

Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that it is hosting the "Silicon Valley Future Communications Summit 2026" in Mountain View, California. Global telecommunications industry partners have gathered to discuss AI-driven 6G network technology.

The event kicked off with a Partner Day on Wednesday (local time) before moving into its main program Thursday. More than 100 telecommunications experts — including leaders from major carriers, manufacturers, government agencies and academia — are attending.

Participants are set to discuss the direction of software-based network evolution in the 6G era and ways to foster ecosystem cooperation for value creation in the telecommunications industry. Samsung Electronics is showcasing its progress in developing AI-native 6G network technology.

At the Partner Day held Wednesday, Samsung Electronics introduced its next-generation network strategy combining AI and virtualization. Panel sessions followed, with telecommunications operators sharing their requirements and visions for AI-based future networks. Equipment manufacturers exchanged experiences in commercializing AI and virtualized networks and discussed paths for the continued development of the telecommunications ecosystem.

"Networks in the AI era are evolving into intelligent infrastructure that reads the diverse demands of an ever-growing range of new services, flexibly adapts through virtualization, and delivers optimal solutions," said Park Jung-ho, executive vice president and head of the strategy marketing team at Samsung Electronics' Networks Business. "Samsung Electronics has successfully achieved large-scale commercialization of virtualized networks together with our global partners."

The Silicon Valley Future Communications Summit 2026, held Thursday, is structured around three sessions: AI-native 6G networks, 6G coverage expansion via satellite communications, and hyper-connectivity bridging the physical and virtual worlds.

The AI-native 6G network session addresses the technical challenges and cooperation strategies needed to advance intelligent infrastructure for 6G networks.

The satellite communications session covers the current state of low-earth-orbit satellite constellations, along with satellite communication standards and roadmaps under discussion at 3GPP, the international telecommunications standards body.

The hyper-connectivity session explores new service directions through technologies that sense and connect physical spaces to digital services — including integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and physical AI. ISAC is a core 6G technology that uses the same frequency band and hardware to perform both communication and sensing functions simultaneously.

Samsung Electronics and its partners will also demonstrate key 6G technologies jointly developed and verified, including AI RAN, a high-density multiple-input multiple-output system (X-MIMO), a distributed multiple-input multiple-output system (D-MIMO) and ISAC.

Through these demonstrations, Samsung Electronics will release real-world verification results covering communication performance with AI applied across all RAN layers, transmission performance in the 6G candidate frequency band (7 GHz), the experience quality of cell-edge users, and sensing performance using base station infrastructure.

Samsung Electronics is expanding cooperation on 6G and AI-based communications technology with a broad range of global partners, including carriers, research institutes and industry consortia.

This year, the company began collaborating with LG Uplus on ISAC technology development and conducted field verification with Verizon at a major global sporting event held in Dallas. Samsung is also deepening research partnerships with leading domestic and international carriers including SoftBank, NTT Docomo, KDDI Research, KT Corp and SK Telecom as it works toward realizing 6G.

"Samsung Electronics is leading the development of core network technologies that will make 6G a reality, through close collaboration with partners across the telecommunications industry," said Jeong Jin-kook, executive vice president and head of the Next-Generation Communications Research Center at Samsung Research. "We will continue to concentrate our advanced research capabilities on advancing next-generation communications technology for both operators and users."


jeongwan@heraldcorp.com