ARTICLE JULY / AUGUST 2001

Widening the road to Broadband
The Application focus of MEDEA+

A) Market trends / user expectations

In May 1995, in its famous communication "Towards the Information Society" the European Commission stressed the importance of broadband networks and services for the professional as well as for the residential markets.

According to estimates by Siemens, at the end of this year, the number of xDSL lines in European households and businesses will have reached 3.4 million (up from only 0.7 million at end 2000). For Europe's 375 million inhabitants this translates into roughly 1 line per 100 inhabitants (the U.S. ratio, for comparison, still is nearly double).

And growth has only started. The Yankee Group Europe last year predicted that by 2005, over 12 million European homes will subscribe to an ADSL service, generating around Euro 5 billion of revenues for its providers. And furthermore, all figures quoted do not include data on the Internet broadband access by cable !

These developments are driven by a very fundamental psychological fact: Everybody wants to save time. Having to wait unnecessarily long in front of a screen for the data requested from the web, is nothing but frustrating. "We want it here, and we want it now" is the war cry of today's and tomorrow's generations.

B) MEDEA+ View on "High-speed communications systems"

In drafting the MEDEA+ "White Book", Europe's industrial experts emphasised the importance of broadband, high-speed Internet access:

"The success of new Internet multimedia applications depends decisively on the availability of broadband, high-speed network access for the individual users. Considering the large scale deployment of user equipment expected, the access area is extremely cost sensitive. High-speed, broadband last-mile access will be mainly based on wireless, HFR (hybrid fibre radio), HFC (hybrid fibre coax), various xDSL (digital subscriber loop) and fibre-based technologies."

For operators and telephone users alike, broadband access turns copper to gold: While the fixed telephone network today is mainly a delivery mechanism for voice with some Internet data traffic, it will more and more become a true interactive, two-way multimedia communication network. This enrichment in functionality and services will considerably speed up Europe's transition to an Information Society and will push and pull growth-generating e-business.

C) MEDEA+ activities / projects in this work area

Already after the 1st and 2nd call many projects in the industry-driven MEDEA+ programme are dealing with broadband aspects of future access networks. UNIACCESS is among others working on Broadband Internet Access issues, UniLAN focuses on broadband mobile terminals, INCA will develop enhanced ADSL/VDSL systems, SCUBA wants to implement new UMTS features in base-stations and 4G-RADIO wants to develop 4th generation radio-based systems with bandwidths over 2 MB/sec.

These projects have been selected and labeled to contribute significantly to Europe-initiated advances in broadband networks, addressing the world market.