H2020 assists fast internet development at 2020 Olympics

The European Commission and Japan have announced funding for four new high-speed network research projects that will help benefit the Japan 2020 Olympics.

The projects aim to deliver more than 1GB bandwidth for each member of the audience at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium. With a total budget of €12m, €6m of funding is drawn from Horizon 2020, and the projects collectively involve more than 40 partners.

Commenting on the announcement, European Commission Vice-President, with responsibility for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes said: “It’s not enough to have a beautiful smartphone – it needs to work everywhere you want it to work. Investments in fast broadband research will repay taxpayers many times over. Europe is leading efforts to make 5G a reality.”

The RAPID project is set to use innovative radio network architectures to advance 5G technology. It will support smartphone internet download of more than 1GB bandwidth to each user in the National Olympic Stadium and other public spaces by 2017. The iKaaS project will develop a smart and secure platform for smart cities based on Big Data resources collected from the Internet of Things (IoT), sensing environments such as mobile terminals, smart devices and smart homes.

SAFARI will develop programmable optical hardware for novel, multi-flow transport functions scalable to at least 400Gbps/channel. Finally, the FESTIVAL project will provide joint EU-Japan IoT experimentation platforms, where experimenters can validate their smart ICT service developments.

One major challenge in Japan is to maximise the total capacity of communications towards the 2020 Olympic Games in stadiums, trains or other public areas. The projects are expected to provide potential business opportunities for participating companies in both regions.