Jio Signs Agreement With Estonia's University of Oulu for Collaboration on 6G Technology

Jio's Estonia arm and University of Oulu have signed an agreement to collaborate for development of 6G technology as well as to foster entrepreneurship.

The collaboration with the Estonia-based university is expected to extend Jio's 5G capabilities and will help explore use cases in the 6G era.

Jio Platforms is the parent of telecom player Reliance Jio.

"As the leader of the world's first major 6G research programme, the University of Oulu focuses on wireless communications leading to 6G technologies.

"We are looking forward to collaborating with Jio Estonia and the entire Reliance Group on targeted research initiatives that will enable future wireless end-to-end solutions for a wide range of end-user requirements," University of Oulu's Director of the 6G Flagship Professor Matti Latva-aho said in a statement on Thursday.

The university said that 6G builds on top of 5G and extends digitisation through unique capabilities, adding that 5G and 6G will co-exist and cover a broad range of consumer and enterprise use cases.

The collaboration will foster entrepreneurship by bringing together a world-class pool of expertise from both industry and academia in aerial and space communication, holographic beamforming, 3D connected intelligence in cyber security, micro electronics, and photonics.

"The collaborative effort will aid in competing with 6G-enabled products in the defence, automotive, white goods, industrial machinery, consumer goods, efficient manufacturing, novel personal smart device environments, and experiences such as urban computing and autonomous traffic settings," the statement said.

Jio Estonia CEO Taavi Kotka said Jio has more than 400 million subscribers in India and their experience shows that building capacity to transmit large amounts of data is becoming critical.

"With this collaboration with the University of Oulu, we can make sure that we keep growing and developing as a world region of the future," he said.

Jio Platforms Senior Vice President Aayush Bhatnagar said that early investments in 6G research and capabilities with the university can complement Jio Lab's capabilities in 5G and bring 6G to life.