Expected Impact

The telecommunications industry faces major challenges to economically deliver higher bandwidths than are possible today. This is because the extra money amount customers are prepared to pay for higher bandwidths is often not large. Network operators therefore need to reduce the unit cost of transporting bandwidth across their networks. PIEMAN achieves this cost reduction by greatly simplifying the network – reducing the amount of equipment, interfaces, power consumption and even nodes.

If commercially deployed, the technology being developed in PIEMAN would give European homes and SMEs cost-effective access to instant symmetrical bandwidth-on-demand. They would be able to make multi-gigabyte up/downloads (e.g. DVDs) in seconds and conventional files (emails etc.) would be delivered inside human reaction times.

The project will maintain European competitiveness in the key technology of broadband communications.

PIEMAN will be proactive from the outset in disseminating its radical thinking into standards bodies and international publications and conferences.