India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) of Excellence in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services

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This UK-India consortium-based initiative has been established in direct response to a previous request from the British High Commission in India. The IU-ATC consortium has developed through a series of workshops supported by EPSRC and the British High Commission in India, commencing with a Technical Workshop in January/February 2006. The consortium comprises 8 research-leading universities in UK, 5 leading IITs, major industrial partners in UK and India (including companies such as BT, InfoSys, Wipro, Sasken, and Tejas), and a number of SMEs. The initiative aims to establish the first virtual India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services, which will put in place the support infrastructure to facilitate, develop and enable the Digital Economy of both countries. This will be achieved through scientific investigation of the technical and functional requirements of Next Generation Networks through the promotion of industry collaboration with research-leading academic institutions and government departments as part of an initial 30 month Phase 1 of an overall 5-year joint programme between the UK and India. The current proposal builds on the existing and well formed consortium, which has already attracted EPSRC support (Travel Grant GR1, INTERACT 5 GR2), UKTI Grant, GOF, and most recently UKIERI-DST Research Award (S083). The explosive growth in advanced telecommunication networks and multimedia services in the last decade has offered exciting opportunities across a wide range of sectors, including communications, education, entertainment, and health. These opportunities have been successfully embraced within Europe and USA, and there is an increasing need to provide similar opportunities for the rapidly expanding economy of India. However, given India's special requirements, this cannot easily be achieved by transference of existing technical and engineering solutions, and a fundamental rethink is required to adapt or develop novel solutions and provide for research, innovation and wealth creation opportunities between UK and India. The IU-ATC initiative is focused on promotion of the Digital Economy, a priority identified under the recent government Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 . The Digital Economy aims to support research and skilled people to effect early adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by a variety of user sectors. Understanding and enabling the impact of information, better positions the UK and India to reap the economic and social benefits offered by emerging Telecommunications Engineering hardware and software together with fixed/wireless/mobile Broadband technologies for low cost sensor and user devices, and service delivery platforms. The challenges in exploiting the promise of the technological advances within NGNs, and achieving their potential performance, economic and social returns, require not only a thorough understanding of the lower layers of the communications networking stack but also a strong ability and interest in exploiting the core technologies for citizen-facing applications. This often implies an appreciation of business and government strategies in specific areas such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and management and requires close collaboration between academia and industry to realise the full potential.