On 3 May 2011, the public-private partnership on the Internet of the Future (FI-PPP) was officially launched in Brussels by EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes and representatives of the European ICT industry. The 600-million-euro initiative runs for five years and aims to address the challenges that hold back Internet development in Europe. The projects launched after the first call of the FI-PPP will together receive 90 million euro in EU funding.

For about two decades, the Internet infrastructure has been increasingly used for applications it was not designed for. The avalanche of user-generated content in the wake of Web 2.0, the increased usage for commercial applications, and particularly the rise of connected mobile devices have pushed the Internet towards its limits.
The Future Internet PPP aims to overcome these limitations and create benefits for European citizens, businesses and public organisations.
As part of the EC’s Innovation Union strategy, the FI-PPP has been created to support innovation in Europe and help businesses and governments to develop a novel Internet architecture and solutions that will provide the desired accuracy, resilience and safety, which the current Internet is more and more lacking while the data volumes and the application demands are increasing exponentially.
This article gives a brief overview on the programme and the projects that have already been started in the first phase of this initiative.

Launch of the Future Internet PPP (from left): Michael Fassnauer, Chief Executive Officer of UBIMet GmbH; Fernando Fournon González-Barcia, President of Telefónica D&I; EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes; Niels Højberg, Chief Executive Officer of the City of Aarhus; Javier Avila Jimenez, Chief Innovation Officer of Atos Origin

The FI-PPP programme

The programme is structured in three phases (see figure). The first phase started on 1 April 2011 and has a duration of two years. In the first phase the architecture will be defined, requirements from usage areas will be captured, and potential test infrastructures will be evaluated. In phase two the core platform will be developed and instantiated on the test infrastructure, while early trials of all usage areas will be run. Finally in phase three large-scale trials will be run to “challenge” the overall platform as a proof of concept. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to play a large role in this by developing and providing applications.
A main activity that runs throughout the five years is the Technology Foundation, often referred to as Core Platform. Its goal is to design and develop a generic and open network and service platform that is capable of supporting application requirements from the various usage areas, e.g. transport, health, or energy. “FI-WARE”, coordinated by Telefónica, has started as a three-year project to commence this activity. Furthermore, two support actions have started: CONCORD will provide the overall programme coordination, complementing the administrative procedures of the Commission. INFINITY’s task is to identify potential experimental infrastructures that can be used for later trials, and maintain this information in a web-based repository.

Use cases

The eight use case projects play an important role. They will define scenarios from various usage areas to be trialled later, and define their use case specific requirements that the core platform will need to support. The use cases are intended to make sure that the core platform is fully suited for running applications from any potential application area.

Further information:
■ FI-PPP launch page on the EC website -
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/foi/events/fi-fpp-launch/index_en.htm
■ FI-PPP website run by the CONCORD project –
http://www.fi-ppp.eu
■ The European Future Internet Portal –
www.future-internet.eu