Why exactly was Osijek chosen as the very first Croatian 5G city? Companies in Osijek Software City believe this government decision could help invest in increasing the number of IT professionals in this often overlooked Eastern Croatian city.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 26th of January, 2020, although the decision to make Osijek the first Croatian 5G city rather than Bjelovar, Karlovac or Rijeka, who all applied, can be primarily explained by a very strong and promising local IT community that would research and create new products based on new 5G technologies. Another part of the answer to that question is that there is already high demand in Osijek.

The Osatina Group, an agricultural company with more than 1400 employees, has embarked on the major computerisation of its operations over more recent years. Among other things, the Zagreb-based IT company GDI Group has connected cows to the internet (yes, you read that right), and with the introduction of 5G, it expects to be able to move to autonomously driven tractors, autonomous drones and operate multispectral cameras for what is known as precision agriculture. One of the projects they plan on will see the introduction of 5G in Croatia bring them direct and very welcome savings.

Instead of processing the data on each vehicle, for example during fertilisation, it will now be able to migrate it to the cloud and send only agricultural-relevant information related to their current location to the vehicles. Ericsson Nikola Tesla opened a development centre in the largest city in Slavonia more than a year ago. It develops 5G technologies and, according to the latest information, employs some forty talented IT professionals.

Gordana Kovacevic, President of the Board of Directors of Ericsson NT emphasised that in cooperation with the University of Osijek, new jobs are planned for 300 young scientists. As previously stated, companies in Osijek Software City believe the government decision to make Osijek the first Croatian 5G city could help them invest in projects to increase the number of IT professionals locally. In its latest available survey, conducted back 2018, it can be seen that the number of software development companies in the county increased by 18 percent to 176, the number of employees rose by 19 percent to 713, and the total revenue increased by 93 percent to 351. 9 million kuna.

Exports from these companies increased by 36 percent to a massive 232.2 million kuna. Rimac Automobili is one of the companies that opened a branch in Osijek. Sacha Vrazic, Rimac Automobili's director of autonomous driving development, says 5G will enable real-time driving telemetry.

"The use of 5G will enable real-time telemetry and we'll be able to transmit data from all sensors, as well as that, 5G is also key to the development of smart city technologies," explained Vrazic.

HT has stated that Osijek already has locations ready to become the first Croatian 5G city and is testing them out. It also pointed out that back in September 2019, they demonstrated the first video transmission over the 5G network in this part of Europe with the Osijek startup Orqa.

Tele2 explained that, according to Hakom, they expect that the allocation of the spectrum for 5G will take place in the second half of this year and that this will fulfill all the preconditions for investing in the 5G network.

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