In another communications research triumph not just for the region as a whole but for the Finnish tech city in particular, the University of Oulu and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have launched a joint 6G resilience programme to advance Europe’s technological sovereignty and societal security.
The €4.3m, Swedish-Finnish joint undertaking, 6G-FISRE – Towards Resilient 6G Networks, is designed to unite leading academic, industrial and public-sector partners to develop next-generation communication systems that operate reliably under increasingly complex and uncertain conditions.
At the heart of the programme is the principle that resilient digital infrastructure has become a strategic necessity. The researchers from the Sweden’s largest technological university and the advanced communications hub in Finland said that modern societies depend heavily on connectivity, yet communication networks remain vulnerable to cyber attacks, infrastructure failures and crises.
The programme is looking to respond to these issues by advancing “resilient-by-design” 6G technologies that maintain continuity of critical services under adverse conditions, rather than treating resilience as an add-on after the fact. This, they said, is the same resilience that keeps civilian critical services running under stress and which is inherently dual-use, strengthening continuity in security- and defence-related operations across the Nordic region.
The collaboration is said to build on “deep Nordic expertise and a long history of cooperation among the region’s wireless communications leaders” and to reflect a shared ambition to shape future global standards. Alongside the University of Oulu and KTH, the consortium includes Aalto University, Chalmers University of Technology, Luleå University of Technology, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Nokia, Ericsson, Bittium, Combient and Saab.
The programme places particular emphasis on dual-use capabilities, designing 6G systems that serve civilian needs and security-related applications alike while influencing international technology development.
Ultimately, the Finnish-Swedish partnership hopes to lay the foundation for broader Nordic and European engagement and position its members at the forefront of resilient communication systems for the digital future. The partners regard the effort as timely and nationally significant, with strong long-term potential to shape Europe’s 6G landscape.
Outlining what he believes the project could achieve, Hirley Alves, a professor from the University of Oulu, said the programme would endeavour to design resilience in 6G from the ground up, ensuring critical services remain connected even during cyber attacks and disasters.
“Mobile networks have always been built for speed and efficiency, not for surviving a crisis. Finland and Sweden have long been wireless pioneers, innovating in parallel,” he said. “By joining our research, industry and testbeds into a single programme, we turn two strong national efforts into a single Nordic force capable of shaping the global 6G standard.”
James Gross, a professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, added: “Resilience can’t be bolted onto a network after it is built. It has to be engineered in and, increasingly, made autonomous, with AI that enables networks to sense risk, adapt, and heal themselves in real time.
“What makes this collaboration different is that it finally brings together Sweden’s and Finland’s wireless strengths: two GSM pioneers moving from parallel efforts to a joint undertaking, with the scale and the shared voice to influence how resilient the world’s future networks will be.”
