ICT Oulu - The first Ubiquitous City of the World

Oulu has been at the forefront of system integration expertise and telecommunications development from the very beginning and has progressively become the research and development (R&D) capital of the wireless world. The active role in standardization of wireless and mobile technologies; remarkable investments in wireless and mobile infrastructure; concrete collaboration with international parties in Europe, Japan and Silicon Valley in the U.S.; and with unique public-private partnership programs, have all made Oulu a leading wireless society with a global innovation ecosystem.

The next generation of Internet technologies, appliances and services is under constant work in Oulu. The Centre of Internet Excellence creates internet-driven growth opportunities by combining innovations with agile business creation processes with leading operators in the field.

Oulu is the world's first "ubiquitous" city. The technology applications produced by the UBI research programme create an environment for residents in which quite new types of interactive services are offered. At the same time, Oulu acts as a genuine test city where enterprises can experiment with the functionality of future products and services in both the actual environment and in real situations. The next development step is OULLabs, Oulu Urban Living Labs, starting late 2010.

Trends:
- ICT is expanding and integrating with other technologies, applications and industries - Integration of next generation internet - technologies and wireless network technologies
- User-driven applications

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in short