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Introduction
Today, the internet is an indispensable part of daily life.We use it everyday for sending emails, booking a travel ticket, online shopping, playing games - and a myriad of other uses. Fast broadband connections are rapidly replacing dial-up for internet access from home. In the near future this trend is expected to lead to the growth of many new, value-added services, such as online entertainment and gaming, downloading of films on-demand, and internet telephony (voice-over-IP).
As well as its use in the home, broadband opens the way to better connections for business and opportunities for new societal services in e-health, e-government and e-learning that will help overcome the digital divide.Thus, widespread, affordable and secure broadband access is a key enabler for an information society for all. These developments in technology and the growth of new multimedia services are placing huge demands on our communications networks. Internet traffic continues to grow at exponential rates: already more than 10% of internet traffic is video streaming applications. Furthermore, the increasing interest in multimedia applications - such as digital imagery, music downloading and webTV - means capacity requirements are increasing in the upload as well as the download link.
All-optical communications networks represent the best means of meeting the bandwidth requirements of future broadband applications and internet services. Most of the terabytes of information that today flow across the global core telecoms networks are already carried on multi-wavelength optical fibre links. However, operators face continuing challenges in being able to manage these transport networks in the most optimal way and in integrating them with the broadband access networks that carry the data into individual homes and businesses.
This brochure describes IST research on Broadband Communications, showing the integrated nature of European research in this domain. It presents profiles of specific research areas holding a promising future, together with selected project descriptions to exemplify and illustrate key ongoing research and technology development.
Technologies for future broadband networks are addressed under IST's Strategic Objective on Broadband for All. Its goal is to develop network technologies and architectures that allow a generalised and affordable availability of broadband access to all European users. Research aims at a range of optimised technologies that permit low-cost broadband access, as well as new concepts in network management and multi-service capabilities.
| View of download the complete brochure (PDF, 780KB) |
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| Read or download the General brochure (PDF, 1.644KB) |
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This book is one of a series of six which correspond to the six strategic objectives:
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| Paper copies | A limited number of printed copies are available (the pack includes the introduction and all six specific booklets). If you wish to receive copies please send us an email mentioning the key word INFSO.D Brochure, the number of copies and the address. |