| Edition 03 | 20 August 2026 | Series: Requirements |
TR 22.870 is 590 pages long, took eighteen months, and is the root of every other 6G study in Release 20. Six use case families, four cross-cutting dimensions — and one of them is not what you would have predicted five years ago.
| Quarter | Track | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| Q2 2026 TSG#112 | SA / CT | Rel-21 timeline agreed; TR 38.914 v1.0.0 approved done |
| Q3 2026 TSG#113 | SA / CT | Rel-20 SA Stage 2 complete |
| Q4 2026 TSG#114 | RAN | Rel-20 RAN1 functional freeze |
| Q1 2027 TSG#115 | RAN | Rel-20 RAN2/3 & RAN4-core functional freeze ⚑ freeze |
| Q1 2027 TSG#115 | SA / CT | Rel-20 Stage 3 freeze (SA/CT) · Rel-21 package + 6G work items approved (Stage 1 freeze) ⚑ freeze |
| Q2 2027 TSG#116 | RAN | Rel-20 RAN4 performance |
| Q2 2027 TSG#116 | SA / CT | Rel-20 ASN.1 & OpenAPI freeze |
| Q3 2028 TSG#121 | RAN | Rel-21 RAN1 functional freeze |
| Q3 2028 TSG#121 | SA / CT | Rel-21 SA Stage 2 complete |
| Q4 2028 TSG#122 | RAN | Rel-21 RAN2/3 & RAN4-core functional freeze ⚑ freeze |
| Q4 2028 TSG#122 | SA / CT | Rel-21 Stage 3 freeze (SA/CT) ⚑ freeze |
| Q1 2029 TSG#123 | SA / CT | Rel-21 ASN.1 & OpenAPI freeze |
Transcribed from 3GPP’s published Release 21 timeline (© 3GPP 2026). Rel-20 is the 6G study phase; Rel-21 is the first 6G normative release.
590+ Pages in TR 22.870 | 6 Use case families | Mar 2026 Completed at TSG#111 |
TR 22.870, "Study on 6G Use Cases and Service Requirements", is the first
completed 6G study in 3GPP and the root of the dependency tree. Work item
FS_6G_REQ, WID SP-241391, running 4 September 2024 to 3 March 2026,
rapporteur Xiaonan Shi (China Mobile), under SA1 chair Vasil Aleksiev (Deutsche
Telekom) and vice-chair Feifei Lou (Nokia). It was approved at TSG#111 in Fukuoka in March 2026
and runs past 590 pages.
Everything downstream inherits from it. SA2's architecture study, the RAN scenarios work, the
security study — each opens by referencing what SA1 said 6G is for. Its conclusions
are now flowing into normative Stage 1 as TS 22.270.
| Family | What it covers |
|---|---|
| AI-Native 6G | Network AI agents, third-party AI agents, model training and inferencing as network functions, AI data and traffic management |
| ISAC | Integrated sensing and communication — the network as an instrument as well as a pipe |
| Ubiquitous connectivity | Terrestrial and non-terrestrial as one system; the "anywhere becomes everywhere" framing |
| Immersive communication | XR, holographic and multi-sensory services with hard latency and synchronisation constraints |
| Massive communication | IoT at a scale and energy profile 5G does not reach |
| Industry & vertical applications | Deterministic industrial automation, and the sector-specific requirements that follow |
Four dimensions that cut across all six
The striking thing is not any single family — most were visible in 6G research years ago. It is that AI appears as a use case family in its own right, with the network itself hosting agents, rather than as a technique applied to the other five.
SA1 wrote requirements for the network to support AI agents as first-class entities — network-operated agents and third-party agents both — plus model training and inferencing, and the data and traffic management those imply. That is a very different claim from "we will use ML for scheduling".
It creates obligations three groups down. SA2 must decide what an agent is architecturally
(four of its eight work tasks sit under "beyond connectivity", including AI and computing
coordination across UE, core and application server). CT3 must decide what it speaks —
TR 29.832, rapporteur Apostolos Papageorgiou (Nokia Germany), is
weighing IETF agentic protocols against 3GPP-specific ones. SA3 must decide how to secure it.
All three obligations trace back to text in TR 22.870.
A 590-page requirements study is not a design, and it is worth holding lightly. Use cases in a 3GPP Stage 1 TR are contributed by member companies and survive by consensus, which means the document reflects what its contributors wanted recorded as much as what the market will bear. Some families — immersive communication in particular — carried similar promises into Rel-15 and Rel-17 without the deployments following.
The test is which requirements survive into TS 22.270, the normative Stage 1
specification opened in March 2026. A use case that does not produce a normative requirement is a
use case the industry declined to commit to. That transition is the subject of Edition 05.
One figure we are not asserting
The ATIS Release 20 webinar characterised the use case distribution as roughly 28% AI and 28% system/operational aspects. We have not verified that against the TR itself, and vendor-deck figures on this release have already proven unreliable once — the Rel-21 Stage-2 dates in Edition 02 came from the same source and needed correcting. Treat it as indicative.
TR 22.870 part two — AI agents as a first-class network requirement, and what SA1 actually wrote down.Sources
Daily Dose of 6G — tracking 3GPP Release 20's 6G study phase, one study at a time. Timeline after 3GPP's published Release 21 schedule.