- Tejas said that 6G will require far more basestations than 5G
- This could raise 6G RAN capex costs, even as core spending may decline for 6G
- The Indian vendor said that many more radios would be required to support 6G sensing applications
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2026, BARCELONA — Indian telecom equipment vendor Tejas Network's Chief Strategy and Business Officer Sanjay Malik told Fierce at Mobile World Congress 2026 that the company expects 6G to need many more basestations than are currently deployed for 5G to deliver on some of the new sensing use cases that the new standard promises.
"With 6G, the number of basestations that are required would be much higher," Malik said on the show floor. This may not be good news for operators, who have so far been happy that 6G will use the 5G standalone (SA) core, saving them large amounts of capital expenditure.
Malik's view is that 6G will require a lot more radios.
This also contradicts recent research from analyst firm Mobile Experts. Joe Madden and company predict that advances such as AI, Giga-MIMO and increased satellite coverage will mean that 6G will need drastically fewer basestations.
Tejas, which is owned by the Tata Group, may have a better sense of how the fetal 6G market is developing because it's part of the Bharat 6G Alliance, which also includes Airtel, as well as many other Indian companies, and affiliate members such as Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm.
Malik said that 6G sensing use cases and applications will require many more 6G radios and new designs like 6G mini-basestations — or small cells — in order to support 6G sensing uses. He expects that among the first of these will be self-driving automobiles and remote surgery.
As these applications didn't actually pan out for 5G as was originally promised, Fierce supposes that another go round on the 6G roundabout is fair game.
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.