Outcomes from the 3GPP SA meeting in Fukuoka

Special deep-dive edition for Sunday April 26th, 2026

Earlier this month we brought you a special edition focused on the outcomes of the 3GPP TSG RAN #111 plenary. However, RAN isn’t the only game in town, so today we bring you coverage of the SA meeting (the service and systems aspects group).

The plenary in Fukuoka last month was, on the face of it, a quieter affair than its RAN counterpart held in the same city that week. But SA #111 achieved something quietly significant: it closed the first of the six SA-led 6G studies and opened the first Rel-21 Work Item in the SA domain, moving the 6G service requirements work towards the “normative” phase. Also, unlike the RAN plenary, the SA meeting produced one decision that the wider 3GPP community had been waiting for, namely the Rel-21 Stage-1 freeze date. Or rather, it produced only that decision – everything else on the Rel-21 timeline was quietly pencilled in and handed to the June plenary for final agreement.

This is my personal take on what happened at SA #111, based on the documentation and post-event discussions. As always, be cautious, any errors or assumptions are mine: there was a lot of documentation generated at the meeting, and it was impossible to sift it all. Having said that, three themes stood out for me:

• the SA WG1 6G study has finished, and the first 6G normative Work Item is now live;

• the Rel-21 timeline discussion produced one firm date and deferred the rest to June;

• and the ongoing governance questions (AI traffic work-split and Capability Exposure) illustrate how SA continues to expose 3GPP’s coordination tensions.

1. SA WG1 closes its 6G study and opens the first Rel-21 WID

The headline outcome at SA #111 was the approval of TR 22.870 (FS_6G_REQ, “Study on 6G Use Cases and Service Requirements”) as 100% complete. This is the first of the six SA-led 6G study items to reach completion, closing a three-meeting cycle that ran from approval at SA #108 in June 2025, through a status check at SA #110 in Baltimore last December, to completion in Fukuoka.

The numbers give a sense of the scope, as more than 190 use cases were captured during the study, covering high-level principles and service requirements for the 6G system. The work drew on - but was not limited to - the ITU-R IMT-2030 usage scenarios, which is an important point because it signals that 3GPP is not simply outsourcing its requirements thinking to the ITU framework.

But the more strategically important decision was what happened next. A new Rel-21 Work Item Description for 6G Service Requirements (acronym 6G-REQ, allocating the new TS 22.270 as the normative output) was approved at the same meeting. This is the first Rel-21 WID in the SA domain, and it marks SA WG1’s formal transition from study-phase to normative-phase 6G work.

There was a substantive discussion in plenary around the WID. Rapporteurs were added, the relationship with the SA WG1 5G Requirements Simplification study was clarified in the WID’s scope table, and the SA WG1 Chair requested a re-labelling of the “Immersive communication” bullet to “General aspects”. This is a small change, but one that broadens the scope of the normative work rather than pinning it to a specific use case. One editorial comment during the TR 22.870 overview presentation is worth noting: Mission Critical Services interworking with non-3GPP systems should reference the PDT (Professional Digital Trunking) system developed in China, alongside TETRA. A reminder that the 6G requirements conversation is global.

Under the proposed Rel-21 timeline discussed at the joint TSG session (see section 2 below), SA WG1 Stage-1 freeze is targeted for March 2027. That gives the 6G-REQ WID just over a year to complete its normative work.

What this means:

This is the first concrete Rel-21 deliverable in the SA domain, and the first piece of 6G normative work to enter the 3GPP specification process. For operators and vendors, it is the signal that the conversation has shifted from “what could 6G do?” to “what will 6G be required to do?” The 6G-REQ WID will now be the reference point for the rest of the SA WGs as they progress their own 6G studies through 2026 and into 2027.

What to watch out for at SA #112: the first progress report on the 6G-REQ normative work, and whether any of the 190+ use cases start falling out of scope as the requirements are tightened.

2. Rel-21 timeline: one date agreed, the rest held for June

The Rel-21 timeline endorsement paper, sourced jointly from the TSG Chairs (Samsung’s Younsun Kim (RAN), Intel’s Puneet Jain (SA), and Huawei’s Peter Schmitt (CT)) was discussed at the joint TSG session on the Wednesday morning of the meeting, co-located with TSG RAN #111 and TSG CT #111. Twelve separate company discussion papers were tabled by AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, OPPO, NTT DOCOMO, Futurewei, SK Telecom, Samsung, ZTE, CATT, China Mobile, Ericsson, and Vivo. The Chairs’ proposed five-headline date set should be familiar by now:

• 5G-A / 6G Package Approval: March 2027

• Stage-1 freeze: March 2027

• Stage-2 freeze: March 2028 (≥80%), June 2028 (100%)

• Stage-3 freeze: December 2028

• ASN.1 / OpenAPI freeze: March 2029

Of these, only the Stage-1 freeze in March 2027 was formally agreed at SA #111. The other four milestones were noted as “TBD at TSG #112” – the June 2026 plenary. The SA decision is important because Stage-1 is where SA WG1 lives. Agreeing the Stage-1 freeze date at the same meeting that the SA WG1 6G study completed, and that the first 6G normative WID was approved, makes internal sense. SA now has a coherent story: the study is done, the WID is open, and the freeze date is fixed. What it doesn’t have is agreement on anything downstream of that.

Remember that Stage-2 (architecture) is SA WG2’s world; Stage-3 (protocols) is RAN and CT. So SA agreeing a Stage-1 freeze date is, in effect, SA agreeing its own homework deadline. The harder conversations, such as the ones about architecture freezes in 2028 and the ASN.1 encoding deadline in 2029, are still to be had, and they involve stakeholders across all three TSGs.

The RAN #111 meeting produced the same outcome on Stage-1, and the same deferral on everything else. The CT #111 meeting, notably, was expected to bring initial 6G SIDs for approval under earlier CT WG guidelines (originally targeted at CT #110, slipped to #111), but did not do so.

It should be noted that the Chairs’ joint paper was carefully structured to give each TSG a single agreeable milestone (Stage-1 freeze) and to park the contentious dates for now. But these contentious dates are where the industry’s real disagreements sit. Chipset vendors want ASN.1 certainty; operators want Stage-2 flexibility; the 5G-Advanced camp wants a separate package approval track, and so on. June 2026 is where all of those arguments will have to be settled. Bring popcorn.

What this means:

SA #111 did what it needed to do: fix its own Stage-1 freeze date and clear the runway for the 6G-REQ WID. But it did not resolve the harder timeline questions, and it won’t have to: those are for the joint TSG session at #112 in June. The real test of the Rel-21 timeline is not whether Stage-1 holds, but whether the Stage-3 and ASN.1 dates survive expose to commercial interests.

What to watch out for at SA #112: the Chairs need to produce a fully agreed date set. Expect the ASN.1 freeze to be the most contested item, mirroring the debate we saw at RAN #111 where some vendors wanted it pushed to June 2029.

3. AI traffic, capability exposure, and the SA governance questions

The third theme is the one that reveals most about how SA actually works. Two long-running coordination questions came to SA #111 for resolution and produced very different outcomes. Both are worth examining because they show the boundaries of what 3GPP can and cannot settle in a plenary session.

AI traffic characteristics: some guidance

The work-split between SA WG2 (architecture and system aspects) and SA WG4 (media aspects) on AI traffic characteristics has been running for the better part of a year. The question is fundamentally about who defines what AI traffic looks like, at what layer of the system, and in what order. SA #110 deferred the question to SA #111 with explicit direction from the TSG SA Chair; SA #111 had seven discussion papers to work through from a number of vendors and operators.

The range of views was wide.

• Should SA WG4 lead, with outcomes feeding SA WG2?

• Should SA WG4 identify AI-related traffic characteristics to SA WG2 by June 2026?

• Do we need to distinguish between token-based (SA WG4) and non-token-based (SA WG2) AI traffic?

• Should we mirror the existing RAN WG2 to SA WG4 relationship for the SA WG2 to SA WG4 pairing, allowing parallel study?

The SA WG4 Chair made perhaps the most pragmatic point: the core difficulty is that there is no definition of the 6G system yet, and the most productive path is for SA WG2-interested companies to simply turn up at SA WG4 meetings.

The outcome was a Way Forward document created at the meeting and endorsed by TSG SA. The WG Chairs will carry the guidance into the next SA WG2 and SA WG4 meetings. Not a grand resolution, but at least an endorsed direction, which, after a year of parallel papers, is genuine progress.

Capability Exposure: another postponement

And then there is the 3GPP Capability Exposure governance question. This one has now been deferred at SA #109, deferred again after a Network Working Meeting at SA #110, postponed once more at SA #110, and at SA #111 it was returned for a third consecutive plenary without resolution.

It was suggested that the study target 6G specifically and that TSG SA create a document to capture actions for Capability Exposure improvements. The discussion resulted in several distinct positions before settling on a decision: SA WG6 should consider initiating a SID if they receive contributions proposing one. This is pretty much the same outcome as the previous three times.

The onus now sits with interested companies to put forward a concrete SID proposal into SA WG6. Whether that will happen before SA #112 is uncertain; the Capability Exposure topic has a habit of running just ahead of the next plenary and just behind the previous one.

What this means:

The two areas illustrate two different SA failure modes and two different SA success modes. AI traffic characteristics got a Way Forward because the TSG Chair forced the issue and the companies showed up with real papers; Capability Exposure did not, because the question of which WG owns it remains unresolved. The system appears to work when ownership is clear, and stalls when it isn’t.

What to watch out for at SA #112: whether SA WG6 receives a concrete Capability Exposure SID proposal. If it does, the topic moves forward. If not, expect a fourth postponement and the consequences that go with it.

Also notable at SA #111

A few items that didn’t make the top three themes but deserve flagging:

SA WG6 Mission Critical Services merger. Two closely-related Mission Critical study proposals were merged into a single SID. This brings SA WG6’s 6G portfolio to two active items: Application Enablement for 6G and Mission Critical Services for 6G.

SA WG3 opens GSMA coordination channel. SA WG3 sent an outgoing Liaison Statement to the GSMA requesting their requirements on 6G roaming, specifically on security aspects. The SA WG3 study on 6G Security is underway and roaming coordination with GSMA is now formally on the agenda.

ITU-R coordination: three LTIs forwarded to PCG. TSG SA endorsed three liaison messages from TSG RAN and forwarded them for onward transmission to ITU-R: the schedule for updating Rec. ITU-R M.2012 to revision 8, the schedule for updating Rec. ITU-R M.2150 to revision 4, and further information on the invitation for IMT-2030 candidate radio interface technology submissions. All three were approved. ITU-R WP5D is also looking for 3GPP input on Report M.2291-2 (IMT use for broadband Public Protection and Disaster Relief) ahead of its 27 May to 5 June 2026 meeting.

Terms of Reference: technology-agnostic update. The TSG SA Chair reaffirmed that WG Terms of Reference should be updated in a technology-agnostic way, with only the overview section amended in the short term to include “6G System”. A housekeeping exercise, but one that matters for how cleanly the transition between Releases is handled in future.

5G-Advanced in Rel-21. SA WG4 raised a procedural question: should there be a formal decision to have 5G-Advanced features defined under Rel-21? The TSG SA Chair’s position was that no blanket decision is needed: 5G-A features can be considered on a case-by-case basis. Rel-21 is a 5G-Advanced release and the first 6G release, and the boundary between the two is going to be a live question for the next two years.

What to Watch

Looking ahead to SA #112 (June 2026), the key items are:

1. Rel-21 timeline final approval. June is the hard deadline. Stage-2 (80% and 100%), Stage-3, ASN.1/OpenAPI, and the 5G-A/6G Package Approval dates all require final agreement.

2. SA WG2 6G Architecture progress check. SA WG2 to report on FS_6G_ARC progress and risks to the March 2027 hard deadline. The SA WG2 ad-hoc e-meeting (24–30 June 2026) falls inside this quarter.

3. Two-sided model checkpoint. Down-selection between SA WG2 and SA WG5 options for dataset and model parameter exchange is due.

4. AI traffic characteristics first deliverables. SA WG4 is expected to provide status by June 2026.

5. Capability Exposure, fourth time asking. Watch SA WG6 for a potential SID proposal. If one doesn’t materialise, then we have a structural problem.

6. SA WG3 – RAN WG2 joint session on 6G security. Planned for April 2026; outputs to inform SA WG3 progress through mid-year.