The TECNALIA Technological Corporation is leading research in Spain on The Future Internet through projects within the 7th EU Framework Programme such as m:Ciudad, MUGGES and 4WARD, with the aim of promoting a structural change in the Network of Networks and designing of a new architecture capable of providing the services of the next decades.
It is now the time to rethink a New Internet for an interconnected future. Over the past 30 years, Internet has evolved from being an academic experiment to become a fundamental part of our lives. There exists the conviction that the development of a new Net has to take place with a "breakaway" strategy to complement the gradual improvements from "evolving" strategies. The architecture of the Internet, which in the past was a drive for innovation in the world of communications, is showing signs of becoming a brake on it.
In this context, TECNALIA is leading the Spanish research towards the Future Internet.
One of the research projects that TECNALIA participates is 4WARD, which is one of the European-level flagship projects in promoting this structural change for the Internet and taking on the design and development of new architecture for the Net – providing a solution to the current limitations of the Internet and considering those aspects fundamental to adapting to the requirements for the society and the technology of the future.
The 4WARD project, within the 7th EU Framework Programme, has a budget of 23 million euros for the two years duration. The promoters of this pioneering line of research in Europe are, apart from the Telecom Unit at TECNALIA, enterprises such as Ericsson, Telefónica, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Nokia Networks and Nec, as well as numerous research centres and universities (a consortium of almost 40 members).
Mobility, safety, reliability or the capacity to generate wealth are some of the factors limited by current lnternet technology and which give rise to the quest for architectures capable of supporting services in an interconnected society over the coming years. 4WARD aims to make advances in the development of new tools and technologies with which the Internet of the Future will be built, considering, moreover, that this new architecture has to coexist with the current one.
The design for a new Internet is not only a challenge to all those limitations that the current system has but, moreover, it tries to anticipate what society will demand in the future and, particularly, what new future technologies await us. The Future Internet has to be flexible, with an architecture able to accommodate, and even boost, heterogeneous communications' networks, working in a cooperative manner.
m:Ciudad
Arising from eMOBILITY, the European Mobile and Wireless Communications Platform, in which TECNALIA takes part of the Steering Board, the m:Ciudad project tackles the design and development of a new infrastructure of mobile services created on-the-go, in which both people and enterprises can create and provide focused services, from simple micro-services to highly complex ones, such as those provided by "fixed" Internet. All this within the mobile sphere, and with its specific conditions of volatility, distribution and connectivity, very different from the fixed world of traditional Internet
This research initiative aims to make advances with new tools and technologies that will enable people, in an easy and efficient manner, to "create and launch" their own services, using solely a mobile device. In this way, the great challenge is for people to generate and provide their own services, apart from becoming consumers, themselves, of content, knowledge and information with a mobile device. Notable amongst the possibilities opened up with this project, is that of dynamically creating services and of generating and sharing content at the moment of inspiration, all this by rapid and simple use of the mobile device.
The possibilities offered by this model are impressive - millions or even billions of potential services with information that is relevant, updated and adapted to immediate preferences and to current circumstances – from own services to social networks such as MiBlog, MiColección or MisPreferencias, creatives (MiGaleria, MiFoto, MiVideo) or commercials (MiServicio, MiAnuncio).
Recently the European Commission selected another of the projects coordinated by the TECNALIA´s Telecom Unit in this research line of creating new infrastructures of services for the Internet of the Future. The MUGGES (Mobile User Generated Geo Services) project aims to put some of these radical concepts proposed in m:Ciudad into practice for future Galileo locating services.
The role of the Telecom Unit at TECNALIA in these projects is fundamental, contributing thus to the development of a solid and benchmark Telecommunications Sector through jointly working on R+D+I projects; supporting administration and transferring value to technological enterprises. Transfer in the form of products and technology that provides knowledge sector companies with the independence, the costs savings, the rapidity or market forecasting they need in order to be and stay ahead.
All this with an innovative and personalised offer for Net Services' Providers, Equipment and Systems manufacturers and for Technology and Components Providers within the Telecommunications Sector.