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The race to 6G isn’t just about bandwidth. It’s about control over spectrum, standards, supply chains and the values underpinning tomorrow’s infrastructure. If 5G taught us anything, trust and interoperability need to be built in from the start.

The Indo-Pacific is already the world’s most contested connectivity environment. Through submarine cables, cloud platforms and national 5G rollouts, governments are already making decisions that will shape how their citizens communicate, how their economies function and who sets the rules. The shift to 6G only sharpens that contest.

Reporting from the Financial Times makes clear that China is moving fast. Beijing is systematically excluding European vendors from its domestic telecommunications networks. Ericsson and Nokia, already reduced to a 4 percent market share, now face opaque security reviews that stretch for months. The message is that foreign firms aren’t welcome, while domestic vendors are being positioned as the only trusted suppliers for national infrastructure. They are backed by policy, shielded from competition and expected to dominate the market at home and abroad.

Beijing has framed these moves as a national security measure. So, it’s fair to ask, is the Indo-Pacific applying the same standard of care?

Australia’s decision to exclude Huawei from 5G was never just about one vendor. It reflected a broader understanding that infrastructure choices carry long-term strategic weight. That same principle should guide how we engage with 6G.

We are not starting from scratch. As I wrote recently, Australia’s trusted-tech positioning in the Pacific is being reinforced through investments in subsea cables, digital resilience and shared cyber capacity. That playbook, built on transparency, partnerships and presence, should now be applied to 6G. The decisions being made today will shape how the region connects for decades.

One of those decisions is around standards. China has already positioned itself to host the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027, which will define key spectrum and interoperability rules for 6G. It is doing so with a state-directed strategy that aligns domestic vendors, patent holders and diplomatic machinery. If democratic states delay coordination, they risk ceding the rulebook before the race begins.

We also need to reconsider how we think about 6G itself. This is not simply a faster network. It is a full-stack redesign. Through open radio architectures, satellite convergence, optical backbones and AI-native traffic management, 6G will support critical functions in health, logistics, digital identity and industrial automation.

That raises the bar for trust, transparency and resilience. Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) offer a path beyond vendor lock-in, allowing modular, verifiable systems to be adopted in ways that reflect local conditions and risk appetites. But this only works if backed by real technical, financial and regulatory support.

We should stop assuming that countries must catch up to 5G before engaging with what comes next. Kenya’s mobile payments revolution didn’t follow the Western sequence of banking and card infrastructure; it moved directly to a different model. A similar opportunity now exists for countries across the Pacific and Southeast Asia that do not yet have full 5G coverage. They are not at a disadvantage. Indeed, they instead have a chance to adopt next-generation systems without inheriting legacy dependencies or opaque technology stacks.

Telstra is already positioning itself for this shift. The company expects consumer-facing 6G services to emerge around 2030 and has rightly flagged that safety, standards and transparency must shape how these systems are developed and deployed. That framing matches what regional partners are asking for: long-term trust, not short-term hype.

Australia is well placed to lead here, but only with deliberate action. That means aligning spectrum and research and development policy with our allies. It means supporting local firms developing O-RAN components, optical networks and testbeds. And it means extending trusted infrastructure frameworks to partners across the Indo-Pacific, not just applying them at home.

Lifecycle support matters too. Trusted infrastructure is more than a procurement choice. It is a long-term commitment. Regional governments need support for deployment, training, regulation and resilience. That is where Australia can offer something strategic competitors often cannot: presence, partnership and predictability.

For many Indo-Pacific nations, 6G is a chance to shape the digital foundations of their economies and institutions. It offers a reset. But only if the choices available reflect the principles of openness, resilience and public accountability. That requires a clear and credible offer from Australia and its partners, one that integrates standards alignment, financing, operational support and shared learning.

In 5G, Australia acted early and stayed the course. That mattered. It helped set a tone in the region, and it showed that long-term thinking could overcome near-term commercial pressure. The task now is to bring that same clarity to the next generation. The region is watching and decisions are already being made.

The opportunity to lead is real. But the timeline is tight.

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