Brussels, 04 Apr 2005
The European Commission is financing a project aimed at ensuring that European research on mobile and wireless communication continues to be the motor for the research and development of these systems worldwide.
The Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) project MOCCA (the mobile cooperation and coordination action) intends to facilitate international collaboration between EU researchers and their counterparts in Asia, the US and the developing world. The aim is to pave the way towards harmonised international standards for future mobile and wireless systems so that the systems meet the needs of users around the world.
'The world has grown closer together and technology has become more complex since the definition of 3G systems,' states the project consortium, which is made up of world-leading mobile operators, mobile manufactures, application owners and research organisations. 'Therefore there is now a need for European research activities to be bundled together to maximise their impact; application requirements and time plans to be clearly understood and taken into account in system definition work; demands from developing countries on system features to be included in requirements capture activities, and European research to be embedded in the global arena of research and standardisation,' adds the consortium.
The MOCCA approach is to be open to the participants of all research activities in the European Research Area (ERA), as well as to collaboration with the many research programmes being conducted in other parts of the world.
MOCCA will pay particular attention to gender issues and aim to encourage women scientists and engineers to participate in projects within the IST (information society technologies) wireless projects. As the project partners explain, at present the ICT industry is dominated by men. As a result 'male thinking models' are the norm. MOCCA therefore hopes to include more women in the ERA mobile and wireless projects world in order to facilitate the evolution towards a gender aware European Research Area.
MOCCA will also provide insight into the needs of developing countries, which are important customers in the world of mobile and wireless technology. In turn, this industry is a key development factor for their economy. MOCCA has established a think tank to not only provide ERA projects with a better understanding of the requirements and roadmaps of the developing world, but also provide the developing countries with the opportunity to become part of the process of new technology development.
For further information on MOCCA, please visit:
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