The EXIGENCE project is thrilled to announce that our interactive demo, “Importance of Service-Level Energy Consumption Control in 6G,” took home the 1st Place Best Demo Award at the one6G Summit 2026!
Held from September 10–11 at King’s College London, the annual event brought together leading international experts, researchers, and innovators to shape the future of telecommunications. Out of 20 pioneering live demonstrations pitched and showcased on stage, our project was recognised for its ground-breaking approach to solving one of world’s and 6G’s most critical challenges: end-to-end energy sustainability.
A Step Toward a Smarter, More Sustainable Future
While individual system components are becoming more efficient, complex digital supply chains often hide systemic energy waste. Local efficiency gains do not always translate to overall savings.
The EXIGENCE project solves this by introducing a per-service energy metering approach. By tracking the end-to-end energy footprint of specific digital services across the full provisioning chain, we bring hidden environmental costs into the light. In addition to environmental data, we support exchanges of commercial incentives between the respective stakeholders, therefore allowing to smartly share these costs in a fair way:
- Empowering Service Providers: with the available service-level energy consumption information, service providers are pushed to strive for the best workload placement. With the provided service variant mechanism and the corresponding incentivisation methods, instead of constantly overprovisioning their resource pool, they can now adjust service quality dynamically, smartly avoiding consumption peaks, so as to build overall smarter, low-impact systems. Note that this supports a mix of internal and external, outsourced components. Besides, providers can finally estimate the energy consumption of the full service, including the consumer part of it, which might be important for regulatory carbon reporting.
- Empowering Service Users: Gives service users clear visibility into their environmental footprint and enables them to choose among different service variants, according to their personal, current need. For example, while a user might see little visual difference between streaming in 4K versus HD on a particular device at a given time, the energy consumption varies drastically. Transparent data enables smarter, eco-friendly choices.
Even though the EXIGENCE project officially concluded in June 2026, this victory confirms that our vision for service-level environmental control remains at the forefront of the 6G discourse.
Inside the Winning Demo
Our interactive presentation showcased end-to-end energy tracking using two everyday real-world applications: high-definition video streaming and conversational AI prompt interactions.
What Visitors Experienced:
- Real-Time Data Visibility: How service resolution, AI prompt complexity, and cloud/edge workload placement directly alter total energy draw.
- Incentive Mechanisms: How transparent consumption metrics can be paired with incentives to naturally drive sustainable digital behaviour.
Two Summits, Two Victories: Back-to-Back Best Demo Award Wins
This marks the second year in a row that an EXIGENCE demonstration has been honored at the one6G Summit. After sharing the top spotlight at last year’s summit in Bologna, our team returned to London this year to claim the undisputed 1st Place Best Demo Award.
“This victory highlights the strength and cohesion of our entire consortium. From initial concept to live execution, people are consistently surprised and inspired when they see our data in action – it proves we are telling a fresh, convincing, and deeply relevant story for the future of ICT.”
— Rudolf Susnik, EXIGENCE Team
“I would like to thank all contributors to the demo, direct or indirect – in particular those present at the event, the back-office support teams, and, last but not least, our platform providers for the tremendous, ongoing support we receive from them, notably Internet Institute Ltd, Telefónica, and Instituto de Telecomunicações. Without your platforms and dedication, this demo would be a fraction of what it is today.”
— Artur Hecker, Deputy Technical Manager
Learn More About EXIGENCE
Explore our research, testbed architectures, and project results by visiting our official project portal. Together, we are building a foundation for sustainable, high-performance 6G networks!
Author
F6S Innovation
Melissa Tang, Communication Manager at F6S Innovation, plays a pivotal role in various EU-funded initiative., Her expertise, built on a foundation of a BA in Design and Advertising and a Master’s in Communication and Media Studies, is further strengthened by hands-on experience leading communication, dissemination and exploitation efforts in over 15 research and business projects.