About Us
 

Dealing with Communication Networks

eMobility is the European Technology Platform for communication networks (mobile and wireless as well as fixed networks). The mission of eMobility is to strengthen Europe's leadership in networking technology and services so that it best serves Europe's citizens and the European economy.

Established European leadership: Over the past two decades, European industry has established a clear global industrial and technology leadership in the field of mobile communications and has a strong position in networking technology. This success in global markets was developed from the results of EU-funded and nationally funded collaborative research, which formed the basis of successful global standards. However, global competition is increasing in different domains. The impact of the Internet and the economic value of Internet applications in mobile and wireless networks as well as in fixed networks is increasing. Therefore, eMobility is working to keep and strengthen a strong European position in research and development in the Future Networks domain.

Great future: According to recent predictions, there will be 50 billion mobile devices in the world by 2020. This development offers Europe an unprecedented opportunity for creating new services and applications. Broadband fixed networks provide the backbone of broadband mobile communications. Both types of networks are complementing each other. Sensor type networks and machine-to-machine communications will get increasing importance, which will require new networking paradigms. Information and communication technology (ICT) will increasingly be applied to solve societal challenges. Energy consumption in communication networks is becoming a major concern. These trends result in new research challenges.
 

Driving a European Strategy

eMobility's role is to help develop a European strategy for exploiting these opportunities for Europe’s economy, as is done via eMobility's Strategic Application and Research Agenda. eMobility offers the participation by all members in working groups to identify new research topics and to provide justification for such research towards decision makers in industry, research and government organisations. The expertise by the community is welcome to develop the Future Networks sector further.

In order to maintain Europe's position in the global market for networking technology, it will be necessary to develop large-scale European approaches to system research and development, and to services and applications in the context of digital convergence and in cooperation with other sectors. In particular, Framework Program 8 should take into account these developments and needs of European stakeholders.
 

Technical, Economic and Political Rationale

Technical: Mobile and wireless as well as fixed network communications require end-to-end compatible solutions encompassing not only a range of constituent technical solutions but also a consistent context for their use as part of the communication grid, the services and the applications. This implies the systematic collaboration of all sector actors within a consistent framework and a shared vision.

Economic: Economics will play a key role in this collaboration. The massive investments and long lead-times for research, development and deployment necessitate a large home market, while the need for inter-working implies economising on the number of competing options, and the need to master technology requires an optimised use of human resources and research facilities.

The importance of networking technology to society at large, citizens and business as well as the contribution to solve societal challenges, cannot be underestimated. The European economy has benefited from the widespread availability of fixed, mobile and wireless systems and the evolution towards broadband services will continue to drive economic growth. The eMobility Technology Platform is outlining both regulatory and research policy issues that need to be addressed in order to provide for a continued growth and take-up of broadband services in Europe and beyond.

Political: Fixed networks, mobile and wireless communications have created unprecedented possibilities for people to communicate and the sector has been a key driver of economic growth. Europe has for some time been leading this development based on a timely initiative of administrations, the scale of the EU market, a consistent regulatory approach, as well as considerable industrial and R&D investment. Building on the success in Europe the success on global markets followed. A single European digital market represents both challenges and opportunities for the ICT industry. The enlargement is a challenge in terms of overcoming constraints to provide the communications and mobility essential for cohesion policy and economic development. It is an opportunity to use new technology on the scale of the enlarged EU. For this to happen, a concerted effort addressing the key issues will be needed.
 

Activities (existing and planned in short-term)

  • Systematic development of an application and research strategy with a progressively growing involvement of sector actors in particular in preparation of EU Framework Programme 8 and national programmes.
     
  • Active efforts to bring together the EU Commission, national and local authorities to promote an environment conducive to the development of the networking sector in Europe.
     
  • Refinement of the Strategic Application and Research Agenda for research and development in mobile and wireless systems as well as in fixed networks.
     
  • Development of position papers on actual topics and contributing to public consultations.

In 2004, eMobility was formed by a group of leading industrial players, including mobile operators, equipment and component manufacturers, and content providers. Currently, eMobility has more than 660 members which not only include industry leaders but also innovative SMEs and leading academic institutions.