The European Union is set to invest 1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) in wireless research, aimed at maintaining Europe's lead as mobile communications enter the multimedia age, wireless industry executives said on Tuesday. The investment in a range of research projects will come from public funds as well as from major telecoms equipment companies such as Nokia, Ericsson and Alcatel and mobile operators such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica.
"In preparation documents, all participants have shown clear commitment to a total investment sum of one billion euros," Nokia's senior vice president and technology advisor Yrjo Neuvo told a recent news conference in Helsinki, but declined to give further details.
The aim of the one billion euro investment, which has been separately confirmed by industry sources, is to "sustain the European leadership in mobile networks and services," the eMobility initiative says on its website (www.emobility.eu.org).
EMobility is a European Union-wide alliance with the private sector to focus research efforts on the mobile telecoms sector.
An official presentation of the eMobility platform is expected later this month, and may be due as soon as Thursday. The first general meeting is scheduled for the second quarter.
The research will concentrate on how to make mobile devices easier to use and more secure at a time when the mobile Internet is maturing. Citizens will in the future rely on their mobile phones for electronic payments, secure access to information and buildings, as well as corporate data.
Meanwhile, services will be tailored according to the location of an individual. Research will also prepare for seamless communications, using the best wireless connection available from the many networks expected to be operating.
European Union companies and government officials hope to repeat the success they achieved in 1987, when they established a single European standard for mobile communications: GSM.
A single GSM standard throughout Europe has helped GSM become the world's dominant mobile phone system. Of the world's total 1.5 billion mobile phone subscribers, around two-thirds use a GSM network.
GSM has also boosted the market positions of European companies like Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel and Siemens.
Mobile services currently account for 3 percent of Europe's total economic output, from virtually nothing in 1990.
Europe's lead in GSM was already under pressure in the mid-1990s when it became clear that vendors would need CDMA wireless network technology developed by US-based Qualcomm for faster third generation networks. European firms managed to develop their own flavour, called Wideband-CDMA.
Now, several other network technologies are knocking on the door. The eMobility platform has identified a need for portable devices that can automatically tune to any number of networks and can last a lot longer on one battery charge.
"It's like Boeing versus Airbus. Europe is pulling everything together to make sure it will not lose its position in mobile," said telecoms consultant John Strand in Copenhagen.
What is at stake is a job market for four million people, which is expected to grow to 10 million by 2010, the eMobility platform said.
"Mobility ... has a greater economic impact than the Internet," it said in internal presentations on its website.
The funding is for research projects between 2007 until 2011 as part of the European Union Framework Program 7 (FP7).
"In order to maintain Europe's position in the global market for mobile and wireless systems in the 2010-2015 time horizon, it will be necessary to develop large-scale European approaches to system research and development, and to mobile services and applications," the eMobility platform says on its website.
Relations with Asian and American research programs should be established to facilitate the emergence of an early consensus and paving the way for successful global standards, it added.