United Kingdom – Digital Economy Programme

Overall Scope

The Digital Economy is a new €110m broad cross-research council programme, aimed at realising the transformational impact of ICT for all aspects of business, society and government. Three large thematic hubs will be created that bring together academia, businesses as users broadly in the areas of, respectively: a) ubiquitous computing (especially with Creative & Transport sectors) b) rural economy, especially with respect to peculiar healthcare and transport requirements and c) inclusivity, especially with respect to local government, healthcare, transport and with a large user-adopter panel.

There are a number of Next Generation Access trials across the UK funded both by private and public sector initiatives such as:

* BT, Muswell Hill and Whitchurch, FTTC trials, 40Mbps

* BT, Ebbsfleet, FTTH trial, 100Mbps

* Virgin Media, DOCSIS 3.0 network, 50Mbps

* Yorkshire Forward, 500k households, 25Mbps

* H2O (Fibercity), Bournemouth and Dundee, FTTH, 100Mbps

One of the largest one was announced by the UK government in April 09 and comprises a €110m investment in NGA in South Yorkshire.

NGA will be used to stimulate demand for new products and services by consumer and SMEs and demand for new equipment and infrastructure.

R&D Scope

Network Architecture. These are real implementation of Next Generation Networks and therefore are a necessary prelude to more comprehensive rollouts. However, the trials will allow value chains to form and allow operators to perform real field experimentation and perform advanced research on complex, real networks.

Expected impact

The UK government has released an interim report called Digital Britain which lays out the their commitment to provide universal statutory broadband access at 2 mbps to stimulate – in particular – the take up of digital government services. It is expected that NGA deployments will be a key contributor to this commitment. Of particular interest are also applications of NGA to healthcare and assisted living.

Involved constituency

UK Government, Technology Strategy Board, British Telecom, Virgin Media, H2O, various Regional Development Agencies, and more.

ceFIMS

ceFIMS (FP7-258542) is funded by the European Commission’s 7th Framework Information Sociey Technologies (IST) Programme, in Objective 1.1 The Network of the Future.

ceFIMS

The ceFIMS project addresses fragmentation of ICT research between European Member States. ceFIMS is gathering knowledge of Member State-funded research to work towards consensus on problems and approaches at the Member State level.

ceFIMS

ceFIMS will produce a research roadmap to maximise synergies between EU and Member State investments in Future Internet research, establishing the basis for an ERA-NET+ on the Future Internet.

ceFIMS

© 2010 ceFIMs