Information & Communication Technologies

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FP7 Highlights

Call FP7-ICT-2009-5 published on 30 July 2009 is closed. The evaluation process for the proposals received under the Objective 1.1 - The Network of the Future is ongoing.

Call FP7-ICT-2009-4 - The majority of the Future Networks projects awarded under this call start in January 2010. Check the Future Networks Call 4 Project Portfolio (draft version - January 2010) and the project presentations for more details.

Call for experts: Register as independent expert for FP7 activities: Evaluation, monitoring and other assistance in the Cordis database and send your reference number to us!

Events Highlights


• Future Internet Cluster Meeting, Sophia Antipolis, 9 March 2010

• The Future Internet Public-Private-Partnership: When smart technologies connect people, Acropolis - Nice,  12 March 2010

Publication Highlights

• Future Networks - The way ahead! - European Commission, December 2009

• European Research on Future Internet Design - IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, October 2009 (pre-print version)

Past events follow-up

• Future Networks 5th FP7 Concertation Meeting, Brussels, 26-28 January 2010 - Presentations available!

• Future Networks 4th FP7 Concertation Meeting, Brussels, 28-30 September 2009

• ICT-Mobile Summit 2009 , 10 - 12 June 2009, Santander

• 3rd FP7-FP6 Concertation meeting, 17 February 2009, Brussels

• ICT 2008, Lyon

The Network of the Future : an essential infrastructure for our society

As we are moving towards an information-driven society, increasingly relying on ICT tools, the development of a converged communication and service infrastructure that gradually will replace the current Internet, mobile, fixed, and audiovisual networks is fundamental.


This challenge is currently addressed in the EU Seventh Framework Research Programme (FP7) under the Network of the Future objective.

In the future, a network of networks will support a wide variety of nomadic and mobile interoperable devices, innovative services, ICT tools and applications, content formats and delivery modes. A new generation of telecom infrastructure, network and internet technologies will be used in the coming years as fundamental building blocks, supporting health, environment, government, transport, entertainment and education to name just a few examples. The Future network will provide underlying support for the Future Internet, enabling new business models and a multiplicity of devices, networks, and service providers.

Research in network technologies is essential and requires very significant investments for enabling our future networked society, in an evolving world where user's expectations are continuously growing, overloading the existing infrastructure with new applications and services that the network was not initially designed for. While the technology itself develops faster and faster, the deployment and implementation of a new network infrastructure technology can take up to 10 years.
As an example, we started R&D on “systems beyond 3G” in the early 2000, when the first 3G network was not even deployed. As a result, LTE (Long Term Evolution) emerged, now a very promising technology leading towards 4G systems which was funded with EU grants under the previous framework programme (FP6). Leading mobile operators and manufacturers around the world have already committed to using the LTE standard.

The Network of the Future projects are organised into three clusters: Converged and Optical Networks (CaON), Radio Access and Spectrum (RAS), and Future Internet Technologies (FI).

The FP7 future networks research largely relates to the technological roadblocks and socio economic scenarios identified by the eMobility and ISI European Technology Platforms (ETPs). In essence, during the first quarter of 2008, 46 projects resulting from the FP7 ICT Call1 have started work in these three areas, representing an investment in research of 200 MEuros of EU Community funding.

Each project has its own goals, but no project can succeed alone. Every project also contributes to the overall objectives of the Network of the Future, and the synergies between groups of projects working on similar topics are vital to the overall success of the research.

The Future Networks projects collaborative research enhances the positioning of EU industry in the field of Internet technologies and reinforces the European leadership in developing Future Network technologies for integrated wired and wireless networks. The projects contribute to global standards and develop innovative Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for European companies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This page is maintained by: Leïla Kerkour
Last updated on: 2010-02-09

 


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