5G and 5G-Advanced cellular networks are vulnerable to regional outages resulting from disasters or targeted attacks. This fragility stems from the reliance on the central core network involved for most 5G connectivity use cases. Crisis-struck regions isolated from the cellular core network form islands, where crisis response is hindered by the unavailability of recovery-relevant services, such as emergency calls, cell broadcasts, messengers, and news apps. Our concept of island-ready, resilient-by-design 6G communication networks envisions local cellular connectivity allowing users to connect to regional application servers, which is currently impossible. In our conceptualization, we follow an all-society approach, as realizing island connectivity requires the cooperation of multiple actors, including users, operators, developers, providers, and authorities. We evaluate how island-ready 5G and 5G-Advanced systems are and outline the open challenges stakeholders must address for full island readiness, such as decentralizing the 6G core network and designing local-first application architectures.

翻译：5G及5G-Advanced蜂窝网络易受灾害或针对性攻击导致的区域性中断影响。这种脆弱性源于大多数5G连接用例对中心核心网络的依赖。与蜂窝核心网络隔离的受灾区域会形成通信孤岛，危机响应因无法使用恢复相关服务（如紧急呼叫、小区广播、即时通讯和新闻应用）而受阻。我们提出的岛屿就绪、韧性设计的6G通信网络理念，旨在实现本地蜂窝连接，允许用户接入区域应用服务器——这在当前无法实现。在概念设计中，我们采用全社会参与路径，因为实现岛屿连接需要用户、运营商、开发者、服务提供商和监管机构等多方协同。我们评估了现有5G及5G-Advanced系统的岛屿就绪程度，并阐明了利益相关方为实现全面岛屿就绪需应对的开放挑战，例如6G核心网络去中心化与本地优先应用架构设计。