A European scientific project coordinated in Spain explores how to design more sustainable and resilient 6G networks

In collaboration with IMDEA Networks and eight organizations from six countries

19 October 2026

The PROSPERO research consortium, coordinated by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and with the participation of IMDEA Networks, brings together nine organizations from six countries to transform the architecture of future sixth-generation (6G) telecommunications networks. Its objective is to achieve an open and intelligent platform that reduces costs and guarantees mobile communications services during major blackouts.

“We aim for a network reliability of 99.999%. That means you would be without a connection for, at most, five minutes during an entire year,” states PROSPERO coordinator, Marco Gramaglia, professor in the Department of Telematic Engineering at UC3M. This objective, known in the industry as “five nines,” applies to the radio access network. For crisis situations, the project also targets keeping critical services available 99.9% of the time, even during large-scale outages. “The impact will be felt especially when events like blackouts, natural disasters, or large-scale cyberattacks occur. Since operators will share resources among themselves, the effect of these incidents will be much smaller and more localized,” he explains.

Another goal of PROSPERO is to shift an industry paradigm in which each company develops and deploys its own network. “We will try to have a single network and a single shared computing capacity to move toward a single telecommunications market in Europe,” points out Marco Gramaglia. In this way, each operator will maintain control over its own infrastructure, but PROSPERO’s architecture will allow operators, cloud providers, and enterprises to collaborate across these boundaries and manage network and computing as a single logical resource. In emergency situations, this resource can be pooled.

Currently, mobile networks constitute critical infrastructure, but they represent a system that is increasingly costly to deploy, complex to manage, and carries a growing energy footprint. To address this issue, PROSPERO is investigating how to transform network architecture in the transition from 5G to 6G by replacing monolithic, expensive, and slow-evolving systems (especially in the access network) with an open, flexible, and intelligent platform. This new platform will run on shared hardware for multiple functions beyond connectivity, featuring native artificial intelligence (AI) integrated by design and mechanisms for operators, cloud providers, and enterprises to share resources securely.

The project stems from a clear industry diagnosis: the deployment of 5G has not delivered the expected returns for European operators, and without a change in approach, the transition to 6G risks slowing down due to financial constraints. “PROSPERO’s starting point is a very concrete problem: 5G rollout was extremely costly, and operators have not yet recovered that investment. Therefore, in this project, we will work on the network architecture to make it cheaper on the one hand and enable new monetizable services on the other,” explains Marco Gramaglia.

In the context above, IMDEA Networks will specifically work on reducing OPEX in 6G systems by cutting the energy costs associated with Radio Access Networks (RAN), which today contribute over 70% of the total power consumption of a mobile communication infrastructure. Dr. Marco Fiore, Research Professor at IMDEA Networks and the principal investigator for PROSPERO at the institute, reports that “current industry-standard energy saving policies mainly rely on carrier shutdown based on local decisions and static thresholding, which cannot harness the full cell switch-off time that is potentially available.” Instead, continues Dr. Fiore, “PROSPERO will develop AI-driven solutions that operate using a broader knowledge of the RAN status and are projected to save an additional 20-30% of RAN energy costs while preserving end users’ quality of service.”

Three pillars to reduce costs and boost new business models

To mitigate the economic risks of 6G, lower the total cost of operation, and enable new business models that incentivize efficient investment in cutting-edge technology, PROSPERO structures its work around three fundamental pillars:

• Uniform, integrated, and simplified architecture: Eliminates barriers between different parts of the network (radio, core, transport, and edge computing) by unifying them into a single framework, lowering required investment and opening the market to new vendors.
• Tailored artificial intelligence: Rather than applying large generic AI models, the project designs lighter and more efficient models. This prevents massive energy consumption, while still allowing network operations to be automated and new services to be developed.
• Secure inter-operator collaboration: Develops a model for sharing network, computing capacity, and infrastructure among different operators, strengthening overall system resilience.

Experimental validation and resilience during large-scale emergencies

PROSPERO’s methodology targets three real-world business cases for the telecommunications sector: cost savings, revenue generation, and resilience. These tracks will translate into concrete solutions designed, implemented, and validated through a series of proof-of-concept tests and experimental evaluations. The goal is to obtain measurable evidence of their performance under real conditions before taking them to international standardisation bodies.

By combining connectivity, intelligence, and efficient resource utilization within a unified framework, PROSPERO seeks to overcome current telecommunications fragmentation, reduce reliance on proprietary technologies, and bolster European technological sovereignty.

Spain features prominent representation in this international scientific project, led by UC3M as the coordinating institution, alongside Telefónica Innovación Digital and IMDEA Networks. The European alliance is completed by NEC Laboratories Europe and Nokia (Germany), FiberCop (Italy), Canary Bit (Sweden), and Real Wireless (UK), with Universidade de Campinas (Brazil) participating as an Associated Partner. “Through all this work, our goal is that when 6G technology is operational around 2030, networks will be environmentally more sustainable and more reliable,” the researchers conclude.

PROSPERO (Programmable and Scalable Operations for Efficient Resource-Aware Architecture in 6G Networks) has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101293102. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the SNS JU. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

More information: https://sns-prospero.eu/