The dates that are already fixed

3GPP, the ITU-R and the World Radiocommunication Conference each own part of the calendar

3GPP writes the specification, the ITU-R certifies it as IMT-2030, and the World Radiocommunication Conference decides what spectrum it may use internationally. Each has published its dates, and they run in that order (Exhibit 1).

3GPP’s part comes in two releases, and it helps to keep them apart. Release 20 holds the 6G study: fourteen study items by 3GPP’s June 2026 count, opened in stages. The use-case study opened in September 2024, the radio scenarios study in December 2024, and the core radio and architecture studies at the Prague plenaries of June 2025. The use-case report, TR 22.870, was approved at SA#111 in March 2026. The radio report, TR 38.914, stood at 90% after the same plenaries and was approved in June 2026. Release 20’s own functional freeze is projected for March 2027 at SA#115.

Release 21 carries the normative 6G work, and 3GPP agreed its timeline at the June 2026 plenaries in Singapore. Package approval and the Stage 1 freeze fall in March 2027. The Stage 2 freeze comes in June 2028, after an 80% checkpoint in March 2028, and the Stage 3 freeze in December 2028 at TSGs#122. The ASN.1 and OpenAPI code freeze follows in March 2029, which Ericsson reads as the first 6G specifications being available in early 2029. There is one difference from last time. 3GPP’s webinars with ATIS have said Release 21 is expected as a single drop, one code freeze rather than the staged drops of Release 15.

The published calendar runs from a March 2027 freeze to a mid-2030 target

The ITU-R’s part is a process with a window. The Radiocommunication Assembly approved the IMT-2030 framework in Dubai in November 2023 as Recommendation M.2160. Working Party 5D then completed the draft minimum technical performance requirements at its 51st meeting in February 2026, and the evaluation guidelines at its 52nd in June 2026. Both go to the Study Group 5 meeting of 30 November to 1 December 2026 for approval. The window itself opens at the 54th WP 5D meeting in February 2027 and closes twelve days before the 59th in February 2029. 3GPP’s own page puts the target for technology proposals at early 2029 and the resulting specifications at mid-2030 at the latest.

The conference’s part is a single event with a fixed agenda. WRC-27 meets in Shanghai from 18 October to 12 November 2027, after the Radiocommunication Assembly of 11 to 15 October. Its agenda item 1.7 decides whether 4.4 to 4.8 GHz, 7.125 to 8.4 GHz and 14.8 to 15.35 GHz are identified for IMT, and part 2 takes that up. Exhibit 2 places the dated events on one axis, and Exhibit 3 lists every entry with the status its source gives it.

The only dates owned by a body that cannot move them are the conference dates. Everything else is a plan, and the organisation that made it can revise it at its next plenary. The last cycle shows how often that happens.

Every 5G release but one froze later than first planned

5G’s releases are the base rate for 6G’s, and they are unusually well documented. 3GPP announces each shift in a news item, and the trade press of the day records the plan it replaced.

Release 15, the first 5G release, was delivered in pieces. The non-standalone specifications were approved at RAN#78 in December 2017 and the standalone ones at TSG#80 in June 2018. A third piece, the late drop, was planned to have its functional freeze in December 2018 and its ASN.1 freeze in March 2019. At RAN#82 in Sorrento that December, 3GPP pushed both back by three months, to March and June 2019. At the same meeting it pushed the whole of Release 16 back by three months, to open a gap between the physical-layer and the protocol specifications.

Release 16 then moved again. At the electronic plenaries of March 2020, 3GPP shifted its Stage 3 freeze from March to June 2020 and Release 17’s from June to September 2021, citing the move to electronic meetings. In December 2020 it moved Release 17 once more, to a Stage 3 freeze in March 2022 and a protocol coding freeze in June 2022. Release 18 went the same way: at SA#98-e in December 2022 its Stage 3 freeze moved from December 2023 to March 2024, for the same reason. So Release 16 froze on 3 July 2020, Release 17 on 18 March 2022, nine months after the date it was scoped to, and Release 18 in March 2024 (Exhibit 4).

Of the five 5G releases whose first plan is on the record, four moved and one held, and every move was later: three, six, nine and three months. A 6G plan that puts December 2028 in without a margin is relying on the kind of date that held once in five.

The commercial date followed 3GPP, and the ITU specification came two years later

The ITU side moved less, and it mattered less to the shipping date. The IMT-2020 framework, Recommendation M.2083, was approved in September 2015. The radio interface specifications, Recommendation M.2150, were adopted in draft by Study Group 5 on 23 November 2020 and approved on 1 February 2021. That is five years and five months from framework to specification. Set that against the launch. Verizon’s 5G mobile service went live in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis on 3 April 2019, on Release 15 equipment and on the same day as the three Korean carriers. That was twenty-two months before the ITU specification existed (Exhibit 6).

Applied to 6G, that history says the date to watch is the Release 21 freeze and the vendor hardware that follows it, and not the ITU’s mid-2030 target. The three vendors that have published a year read it the same way. Qualcomm said in March 2026 that it expects commercial systems from 2029 onwards, with specification-compliant pre-commercial devices in 2028. Nokia puts the first commercial networks in late 2029 in early-adopter countries, and large-scale deployment in 2030. Ericsson expects the first commercial systems in 2030. If Release 21 moves, the move will show first as a 3GPP plenary decision with a news item attached. A plenary news item is a cheap thing to watch for, and it is the first entry on the list in part 7.

A freeze is a commitment to stop changing a document

A freeze is a commitment by a membership organisation to stop changing a document, and that is all it is. It binds no carrier to buy anything, no vendor to ship anything and no regulator to sell spectrum. So the dates split into kinds. The conference dates are fixed by treaty and have not moved. The 3GPP dates are fixed by consensus, and they move when the consensus decides, as it did four times in the 5G cycle. The commercial date is fixed by nobody and is inferred, which is why it appears in the calendar once, attributed to the three vendors that have published a year.

What makes the calendar useful is that a named body with a named meeting owns each date. A slip is announced rather than discovered, and a roadmap built on the calendar can be re-dated in an afternoon rather than rebuilt.

The terms, briefly

• Stage 1, 2, 3. 3GPP’s three layers of a release: the service requirements, the architecture, and the protocol detail. A Stage 3 freeze is the point after which the radio protocols stop changing, and it is what vendors build to.
• ASN.1 and OpenAPI freeze. The later point at which the machine-readable encodings of those protocols are frozen, so that implementations can be tested against each other. 3GPP also calls it the code freeze, or the end date of a release.
• IMT-2030. The ITU-R’s name for the family of radio technologies it will recognise as 6G, as IMT-2020 is for 5G. 3GPP submits its specifications as a candidate; the ITU-R evaluates and publishes.
• Identification. What a World Radiocommunication Conference gives a band when it marks it for IMT in the Radio Regulations. It is permission for administrations to use the band for mobile under agreed conditions, and neither an allocation to any carrier nor a sale.