A decade of European collaboration in the development of integrated broadband communications

When the RACE Programme was launched in 1987 fragmentation of the telecom sector was pronounced in Europe. Industry and its research were, with few exceptions, organised around national champions and the notion of working towards a European Communications Space providing for the needs of an internal market was a remote ambition. The RACE Programme was set up with the objective of assisting in the formulation of the next generation telecom systems-integrated broadband communications-on a European level, avoiding the emergence of incompatibility by carrying out collaborative R&D at the pre-competitive and pre-normative level. The new Programme, Advanced Communications Technologies and Services (ACTS), will benefit from the well-established practice of collaboration on a European level and addresses the challenges shaping the next decade. Contributions are already being made towards defining the objectives, scope and tasks for this programme, which, subject to the political decision process, can be launched in ´94. An outlook on the probable nature of the ACTS Programme is given