Tampere set to become one of Europe’s fastest cities with launch of 5G mmWave

New services for Tampere’s citizens to be unlocked via ultra-fast 5G mmWave connectivity.

he Finnish city of Tampere is set to become ‘one of Europe’s fastest cities’ as it collaborates with Elisa, Nokia, Qualcomm, and CGI in the launch of 5G millimetre wave (mmWave).

Tampere will launch new services leveraging gigabit speeds, high network capacity, and generally superior connectivity and user experiences.

Now the city’s vision is to combine local datasets – on the environment, transport, healthcare, public services, and more – with best-in-class 5G mmWave communications infrastructure to develop and offerbetter services to its citizens and city authorities alike.To help deliver this ambition, Tampere will host a 5G mmWave and XR Hackathon starting in Autumn 2022. The hackathon will invite university and start-up developer communities to compete to design new use cases leveraging on the city’s reach data sets. The developers will be invited to use mixed reality as the medium for interaction with, and visualization of, the available data, while leveraging Tampere’s cutting edge 5G mmWave network.

The partnership team is intending to expand 5G mmWave in additional locations across the city, while Tampere is planning to apply for EU funding to help accelerate its rollout. Tampere is already one of the leading smart cities in the Nordics, with multiple live digital transformation projects including an autonomous shuttle bus, smart street lighting, and many more.

Ari Kynäslahti, Head of Technology and Strategy at Nokia Mobile Networks, said: “5G mmWave technology delivers extreme speeds and a high-capacity, low-latency performance that will enhance the connectivity experiences of both citizens and visitors to the city of Tampere. We are proud to work closely with our partners on this exciting project and look forward to helping Tampere achieve its ambition of becoming one of the fastest cities in Europe.”

Kalle Lehtinen, CTO, Elisa, said: “It is great to see that Elisa´s 5G network and close collaboration in Tampere area creates unique possibilities for the city itself and everybody in the ecosystem. Tampere was one of the first places in the world where commercial 5G network was opened in 2018. Elisa has been there ever since to develop even better 5G services for citizens in Tampere and across Finland. And yet, there is much more to come.”

George Tsirtsis, Senior Director of Technology Qualcomm, said: “The pioneering work completed by the city of Tampere has already demonstrated the value of 5G mmWave networks, and there is plenty more exciting potential to be realised in the months and years ahead. The hugely innovative applications running on these 5G networks will make life in our cities simpler, greener and more convenient, and we expect to see plenty more cities following Tampere’s lead as the 5G rollout continues and more applications are developed which harness the true potential of 5G mmWave.”

Markku Niemi, Director, Smart City Development, Business Tampere said: “When it comes to digitalization and ‘smart cities’, we believe that the City of Tampere is recognized as a strong thought leader in this field. The new technology that our partners are bringing to showcase this leadership and open up totally new interesting world class possibilities for companies, citizens and the city in the area on Virtual Reality, media production and media consumption. The Tampere Smart City Week from 14-15 June 2022, will be a fantastic showcase to a broader audience of what can be achieved with the right partners sharing a similar vision.”

Further Information:

Business Tampere
Markku Niemi, Director, Smart City
Mobile: +358 50 511 7341

Elisa
Elisa Mediadesk
Phone: +358 50 305 1605
Email: mediadesk@elisa.fi

Qualcomm:
Richard Tinkler, Senior Director, Marketing
Mobile: +44 7720 060619.
tinkler@qti.qualcomm.com

e right partners sharing a similar vision.”