First 5G ‘Innovation Lab’ established at NUST

Will help researchers work on AI, augmented and virtual reality

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan’s first 5G Innovation Lab was established on Wednesday in the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in a joint venturebetweenthe industry and academia.

The target of the innovation lab is to determine the utility of 5G through a social-economic lens and launch indigenous solutions related to health, education, mobility, and businesses which suit the local environment.

The “innovation lab” is a research project powered by Jazz, the largest telecom operator in the country and Huawei Technologies, while various disciplines of NUST will be involved to determine the impact and utility of 5G telecom services in Pakistani society.

It was highlighted that by leveraging its high bandwidth, low latency and advanced security, the project will help researchers work on potential use cases for 5G in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality.

This will be applied to the healthcare sector, manufacturing and services industry, agriculture, security, disaster management, entertainment and the public sector.

The Federal Secretary for Information Technology and Telecom (MoITT), Mohsin Mushtaq, performed the groundbreaking of the 5G Innovation Lab and said,“The lab will play a pivotal role in helping us build an ecosystem to explore 5G-enabled use cases of IT and telecom technologies in various sectors.”

The lab will help spearhead the implementation of use cases for co-innovation ecosystem development for 5G.

The speakers highlighted that unlike 4G, 5G usage was not only limited to dat aand telephones but also has a wider implementation as a stimulant for the digitisation of other industries.

VEON Group CEO, Kaan Terziolu said, “There is a need to have a look at the future of communications where 5G will have an important role to play.”