Olympics fans arriving at South Korea’s Gangneung Station on their way to the coastal ice arenas this week are getting a sneak peek at 5G Champion, a pioneering mobile-broadband project two years in the making. This joint EU-Korea venture—led by France’s CEA-Leti and South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute—stands out as a quiet contender in what the Games’ official telecommunications sponsor, KT Corp., has dubbed the “first 5G Olympics.”

The Finnish, live-streamed competition allows tech entrepreneurs to pitch their business to a group of investors while standing waist deep in frigid waters of the Baltic Sea. The goal is to get your message across quickly in order to spend as little time in the water as possible.

Think Dragon’s Den with the temperature turned way down, and less clothing.

Analysts from Macquarie bank have outlined 13 places where the world’s best and brightest tend to cluster.

Macquarie’s team referred to such regions as “brain belts” — areas which have developed into hubs which attract the smartest people to work in different areas of cutting edge technology.

The list is based on research in a 2016 book by Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker called “The Smartest Places on Earth”.

Finnish communications regulator Ficora has granted radio licences to VTT Oulu and Turku University of Applied Sciences to conduct IoT research and to test 5G services. In the 5GTN Plus research project funded by the innovation agency Tekes, VTT uses the 700 MHz frequencies mainly for IoT research and testing.

HELSINKI, June 15 (Xinhua) -- The EU Commissioner responsible for Arctic policies, Karmenu Vella, on Thursday underlined the impact of Arctic development for the whole world.

Vella spoke at the opening of the first ever EU Arctic Forum in Oulu, Northern Finland. Vella noted that the Arctic region keeps warming at twice the speed the rest of the globe, local Oulu newspaper Kaleva reported.

Hospital navigation with augmented reality brought victory in 5G-Hackathon

“We will strive to get our application implemented here in Oulu, in India and all around the world”, says Pranav Jain from the winning team.

The Oulu 5GFWD Hackathon Grand Prix prize winning app, Navify, helps people to navigate with augmented reality. The solution can also be used to build for example a system of autonomous robots delivering parcels to the right places in large building complexes.

Finland's first 5G test network 5GTN expands in Oulu. 5G development environment of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the University of Oulu and the Centria Polytechnic will be used especially for vertical business use. There is already a large number of Finnish companies with whom 5G technology has been developed and will be tested in several application areas. The first new solutions are targeting for field trials already this year.

Here in the North, aquaculture and greenhouse farming ecosystems might well be the next big success story. Now, OIA’s Industry 2026 ecosystem in cooperation with Laitakarin Kala Oy is paving the way for the food production of the future by utilising latest industry innovations.

By 2030, the world needs 50 % more food, 45 % more energy and 30 % more water. This increase in demand creates pressure on supply. Additionally, it creates pressure for food safety and domestic food production, in the areas where production conditions are harsh. Currently in Finland, of all the fish sold on the market, two thirds is imported.

With digitalisation, a sizeable amount of patient data, both new and old, is entered into various digital patient data management systems. The key to successful and high-quality care lies in integration between systems. OYS TestLab, one of OuluHealth’s test environments, allows system integration to be tested in a genuine environment with systems such as Tieto’s Lifecare and Oulu University Hospital’s Esko system.

OuluHealth ecosystem, part of Oulu Innovation Alliance, is home to three versatile test environments for testing both health technology and services with the help of professionals. The significant network of health technology companies are also part of OuluHealth.

Oulu has an astonishing track record in ICT and a bright future with 5G on the horizon. ICT is not all about fast networks and the latest bells and whistles – it is also about creating groundbreaking ways in which to utilise ICT. In Oulu, one such disruption is brewing.

Financial technology, FinTech for short, is the rising star in both finance and ICT. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland’s research professor Heikki Ailisto says Oulu could be the hub of FinTech in Northern Europe.