Finland and China to develop information society of the future?
Finland's information technology (IT) sector and China's national telecoms testbed have announced the start of a wide-ranging cooperative initiative to develop the infrastructure and services needed for the future information society. The initiative was agreed upon on by Finland's Digital Media Service Innovations, an association of leading IT companies, Forum Virium Helsinki, a public-private digital services cluster, and B-Star, China's national testbed for telecom technology and broadband services. In the first phase of the initiative, innovative Finnish companies will have the opportunity to test their new digital services and content in the Chinese testbed. The testbed currently consists of 10s of thousands of users, and is expected to exceed 100,000 by 2008. Partners in B-star include China's leading telecoms companies, universities, research institutes, and international companies such as Nokia, Alcatel, OKI and Intel. In subsequent phases, Chinese technology organisations will be able to make use of Finland's Living Labs - a large-scale test environment which develops and tests new information and communication technology (ICT) services, technologies and business. The network comprises 20 Living Labs from 16 countries. 'This cooperation is a significant initiative between leading information society organisations in Finland and China. By mutual access to state-of-the-art testbed networks in our respective countries, we are building the foundation for a new level of collaboration between China and EU countries. Finland is a leader in the information society initiatives of the European Union, and this Finnish-Chinese cooperation supports our goal of promoting the commercial utilisation of existing testbed networks as well as the continuous development of European Living Labs,' said Kimmo Ojuva, President of the Dimes Association. 'Forum Virium is an active member of the European Network of Living Labs. The partnership with B-Star provides us with a superb opportunity of testing new ICT services and technologies, as well as creating entirely new markets. We look forward to a close and successful collaboration in numerous areas, including the development and commercialisation of next-generation network services and e-health projects,' said Mr Jarmo Eskelinen, Director, Forum Virium Helsinki.
Countries
Finland