By Sarah Collins - 2nd February 2009
I remain convinced that ICT in general and the internet in particular are the tools we need to get us out of the economic crisis
European information society commissioner Vivane Reding
EU information society chief Viviane Reding has said she will announce a public-private partnership on the future of the internet in the next month.
The move comes on the back of last week’s mobilisation of €5bn of unspent money from the EU budget for energy and internet projects, of which €1bn is earmarked specifically for installing broadband in rural communities.
“I remain convinced that ICT in general and the internet in particular are the tools we need to get us out of the economic crisis,” Reding told an audience at an event organised by Brussels think-tank the Lisbon Council.
According to Reding, the future of the internet is in cloud computing, where services are supplied over the internet, and the ‘internet of things’, which refers to wireless networking between objects, such as mobile phones and PDAs.
In order to enable these technologies, the commission wants to see 100 per cent high-speed internet coverage across Europe by 2010, and originally earmarked the €5bn investment in its economic recovery plan last November.
According to a recent commission survey, although 93 per cent of Europeans had access to a broadband connection in December 2007, they were concentrated in densely populated areas; 30 per cent of the EU’s rural population still has no access to high-speed internet.
However, Reding was quick to point out that four EU countries - Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden - are world leaders in deploying broadband, exceeding 30 per cent for 2007. The US comes in at 22 per cent.
The EU wants citizens to have internet speeds of above 2MB per second, which is the minimum amount it says is required to stream online television, for example.
“In the long-term perspective we are accelerating investment into research and into linked research, including research platforms,” Reding said of the proposed public-private partnership.
“This is a lesson from the internet generation - don’t do it in ivory towers.”
In the last year, nine so-called European technology platforms have been created, which are industry-led networking and collaborative groups to define strategic research in a given area.
Out of these nine, two - Artemis for embedded systems and Eniac, the nanoelectronics platform - have become public-private partnerships, with injections of public money amounting to a total of around €200m.
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