Collaboration
Taiwan Joins Global 6G Innovation with 6G-SANDBOX Toolkit Deployment
ITRI has successfully deployed the 6G-SANDBOX Toolkit—an experimental network management system—in collaboration with European partners.
This advanced 6G testbed, established in Taiwan, enables rapid assembly and management of network components. It represents a significant milestone for Taiwan in the global 6G landscape, fostering deep integration between local companies and the international research ecosystem, thereby accelerating 6G R&D, validation, and commercialization.
ITRI successfully deployed the 6G-SANDBOX Toolkit in collaboration with European partners.
6G-SANDBOX is a flagship 6G project funded by the European Union’s Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU). The 6G-SANDBOX Toolkit, one of its key outcomes, offers three defining features:
- Modularity: It encompasses radio access networks, core networks, cloud platforms, measurement tools, and application modules. Users can flexibly assemble different configurations as needed, avoiding heavy infrastructure investments and long deployment cycles, while adapting to diverse application scenarios.
- Automation: It provides a unified control and management interface, supporting automated configuration and validation processes. This enables real-time adjustments and rapid iterations, significantly shortening the cycle from R&D to proof-of-concept, reducing testing risks, and improving efficiency in technology benchmarking and optimization.
- Interoperability: Designed with open architecture principles, it supports integration across vendors and technologies, enabling end-to-end validation from user devices, radio access, and core networks to applications. This highlights the potential of 6G in diverse domains such as smart cities, satellite communications, and immersive experiences.
“ITRI is the first deployment of the 6G-SANDBOX toolkit outside of the consortium. The technology is now ready to be spread across the globe and testbeds to support 6G experimentations,” said Michael Dieudonne, 6G-SANDBOX project coordinator, R&D Manager at Keysight Technologies.
“We are delighted to collaborate with 6G-SANDBOX, marking an important milestone in EU–Taiwan collaboration. ITRI will continue to serve as a strategic hub connecting companies from Taiwan with the international community—driving validation, commercialization, and standardization to strengthen Taiwan’s strategic role in the 6G era,” said Dr. Pang-An Ting, ITRI Vice President and General Director of Information and Communications Research Laboratories.
With this toolkit, Taiwan’s academic and industrial partners can participate in international application validation without requiring large-scale infrastructure investments or overseas deployments. This shortens the innovation-to-validation cycle, reduces costs and risks, and, most critically, ensures that results validated in Taiwan are internationally recognized. These outcomes can directly contribute to global standardization bodies, enabling Taiwanese companies to play an active role in the 6G ecosystem with concrete data and validation results, accelerating their integration into the global value chain.
The successful deployment of the 6G-SANDBOX Toolkit in Taiwan not only establishes an international-grade interoperability environment but also underscores Taiwan’s strategic role as the first EU partner site outside Europe. This collaboration demonstrates a pioneering model of EU–Taiwan collaboration, spanning R&D, technology validation, standardization, and commercialization, thereby shaping a sustainable innovation ecosystem.