Structural Funds for European Regional Development through the deployment of ICT networks and R&D infrastructures
European Project SFERA (Structural Funds for European Regional Research Advancement) has held its kick-off meeting in Toledo on January 21st – 22nd. This meeting has been hosted by the Castilla-La Mancha Industry Ministry, due to the great interest that this project has for the region of Castilla-La Mancha, and thanks to Mr. Jose Aznar (Castilla-La Mancha General Director of Telecommunications) SFERA is a European project financed by EC Seventh Framework Programme. SFERA was conceived and is coordinated by Telecom Castilla-La Mancha, S.A. with the assistance of the Castilla-La Mancha Company Rose Vision S.L. Structural Funds, which are quite well-known in Castile-La Mancha Region as well as in other European Regions, are a tool that European Commission has used traditionally to foster and stimulate the growth of European Regions least developed. Current Structural Funds budget, approved for the period 2007-2013, considers different types of aid depending on the different levels of development of the Regions. Regions within convergence objective (former objective 1) will be those that will receive most of Structural Funds. For the period 2007-2013, the budget allocated to regional policy amounts to around € 348 billion, comprising € 278 billion for the Structural Funds and € 70 billion for the Cohesion Fund. This represents 35% of the Community budget and is the second largest budget item. One key feature of Structural Funds investments during the 2007-2013 period is that an important part of the above mentioned funds will need to be invested in R&D activities related to Information and Communications Technologies. The project SFERA was created with the intention of being a tool for European Regions, in order to advise them in their investment strategies, so that an efficient investment should be achieved maximizing benefits for the Regions, its citizens and local industry. Given the characteristics of the Regions included within Structural Funds convergence objective (low density of population, multiple very dispersed population centers, rough orography in some cases, etc.), it was considered that project SFERA had to center its activity on wireless technologies, where the main protagonist are satellite communications (SatCom). The factors that make the SatCom key to reach objectives proposed for Structural Funds 2007-2013 period regarding TIC development in the Regions are, among others, the enormous advances that have taken place in this sector, reducing drastically costs associated to SatComs, and making much more simpler and trustable its use. Of course, main feature of SatComs is its coverage and this is the reason why SFERA will foster intensive use SatCom in the Regions by promoting the concept of aggregated demand. In SFERA project, supported by DG INFSO, Telecom Castilla-La Mancha (TCLM) is the coordinator, with participants of France (EADS Astrium), Luxembourg (SES ASTRA), Italy (ASTER), Hungary (ISVZ), Bulgaria (BASSCOM), (ARIES) Romania and Spain (ROSE VISION). For further information and possible cooperations, please, do not hesitate to contact us. http://www.sferaproject.eu(opens in new window)
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom