The European Commission strategy is to put Europe at the forefront smart internet-powered infrastructures and has called on EU governments and the Information and Communication Technologies sector to take advantage of the increasing demand for innovative applications of the internet to make existing infrastructures like healthcare systems, energy grids or traffic management 'smart'. The Future Internet portal has also been set up.

The EC will launch a partnership between public authorities and major ICT players with a budget for 2011-2013 of €300m  for projects to be selected in the near future, to complement the €200m  yearly ICT support to ongoing research for underlying internet technology.

"Online applications and technologies can improve transport in cities, which will soon house 70% of the world population. They can, and must, improve the systems that manage our energy, because electricity consumption will have doubled by 2030. And with an ageing EU population, the internet can make our health care systems more efficient and treat patients from afar," said Viviane Reding, (right) EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"Internet data traffic is today growing already by 60% every year. As the internet connects to billions of sensors and online mobile devices to deliver ever more sophisticated information, these infrastructures need to be 'smart' enough to use such huge amounts of data in real time.

For example, through internet technology like sensors, smart tags and, one day, the Galileo navigation satellite system, traffic jams, which cost Europe €135bn a year, could be reduced by 20% and emissions by another 15% through intelligent transport systems. 

Smart systems are already being piloted in regions and cities throughout Europe. For example, Stockholm invested in a smart traffic management system which cuts travel time, boosts public transportation and reduces carbon emissions. Through the use of sensor networks and mobile devices (near) real time data can be collected which is key to managing energy or transportation systems. This information can then be used to optimise the urban mobility system for example. These wireless devices will also benefit from the extra spectrum provided by the digital dividend as they get widely used.

Future Internet R&D Initiatives world-wide
Multiple initiatives addressing the challenges of a Future Internet have been launched worldwide. They all seek to support the growth and competitiveness of the countries concerned. The most well known initiatives are:

•  USA  GEN /FIND initiative of the NSF, with the FIND umbrella supporting  research whilst the GENI provides the experimental research and testbeds facilities. FIND is replaced by the new initiative NetSE Network Science and Engineering, launched in September 2008. It includes support to PlanetLab. On the GENI side, the GPO (GENI Project Office) was established in May 2007. It supports 5 different approaches to future networks. A new research agenda was delivered in December 2008, in partnership with NetSE. Budgets amount to: NetSE $20m per year over 4 years; GENI $5m per year over 5 yrs

• Japan "New Generation Network" initiative (NWGN) complemented with the creation of the NWGN promotion forum, including today more than 200 members from industry and academia.

NWGN is supported by the AKARI initiative, a couple of research projects exploring Future Research paths with a main focus on network technologies and strong emphasis on optical technologies, sensor networks and security.

Similarly to GENI, AKARI initiative includes experimental research projects based on virtualisation and time slicing, with availability of "virtual routers" made available through Planetlab for world wide experiments and applications. PlanetLab (below) currently consists of 1038 nodes at 487 sites.

For these two initiatives, clean slate approaches are considered with a time to market horizon in the 2015 to 2020 range. Several EU Member States have also initiated research activities that are directly or indirectly related to the Future Internet. The following is a list of some of these initiatives:

Belgium has established the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology, IBBT. It federates about 600 researchers in Belgium, from various universities and centres and supports research and experimentation using also Living Labs concepts, with active support to communication research relevant to the FI issues. The centre notably includes extensive
experimental facilities able to emulate 100's of networked nodes that can run under multiple environments. Several experiments can run in parallel, hence potentially replicating the GENI "slicing" approach.

France provides direct research support to the FI through calls managed by the "Agence Nationale de la Recherche" (ANR). The activity is part of the "Information and Communication Science and Technology" (ICST) domain that represented an overall budget of €127m for 194 funded projects in 2007. This includes fundamental research and industry-academic partnerships.

As part of the national effort to structure research and innovation, a number of competitiveness poles are also relevant to the FI theme. These include: Cap Digital, System@tic, Image et Reseaux, Tracability. To define the national strategy, a national Task Force has been put in place to produce a report on FI issues through the GRIF (Groupe de Réflection sur l'Internet du Futur).

Finland: The new innovation policy of Finland is being supported by so called "SHOKs" (Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation). FI is one of the major areas in the ICT SHOK, which was put in place with multiple Finnish stakeholders (lead by the non profit company TIVIT, 66% owned by companies). Under the FI mission, strong emphasis is placed on innovation, novel network management schemes, security and native support of mobility.

Germany: Supports several research activities on FI through the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Those are embedded in the wider context of the German "IKT 2020" strategy, whose main goals are to maintain a technological leadership and to foster the emergence of innovative applications for users. A key initiative in FI is the G-Lab initiative, which provides an experimental platform for studies on mechanisms, network protocols and applications with design concepts similar to those of the US GENI platforms.

The Netherlands: provide indirect support to the FI problematic through its national research policy. The main approach is to leverage Internet capabilities to open innovation in other economic or social sectors. Hence, the main FI related activities in the Netherlands focus  on applications in typical sectors such as transport, e-government, e-banking.

Spain: is relying on the work performed through the National Technology Platforms, notably dealing with content and media. National plans are expected to include a visible part related to the FI, in conjunction with research on digital content. More direct support is expected through launch of the "Internet del Futuro" initiative, chaired by Telefonica.

Sweden has set up an Internet Foresight project under the auspices of IVA (Royal Academy of Science, Engineering) that has delivered a number of recommendations to make Sweden a prominent Internet nation by 2015. Implementation of this objective is expected to be realised through the setting up of the "Ambient Sweden" programme, which includes the establishment of an Internet of the Future Committee. The retained approach is based on a strong industrial involvement.

UK has no specific FI programme; however national agencies are funding a range of projects that are addressing aspects of future internet. The EPSRC will be spending ca £90m in 2008/2009 on ICT research at UK HEIs in AI; Information and Knowledge Management; Multimedia; ICT Networks and Distributed systems; and User Interface Technologies. Technology Strategy Board (TSB) will be spending a considerable proportion of its £300m pa budget on business-oriented collaborative R&D & knowledge-transfer in ICT.