Europe invests £20m in photonics research to accelerate broadband

The European Commission and other key European countries are to invest £20m in photonic research that will deliver superfast internet to the home in excess of 1Gbps.

The UK, Austria, Germany, Poland and Israel will all work with the European Commission to set up 13 photonic research projects with the aim of achieving this goal.

Photonics is a branch of technology that deals with the transmission of photons and enables devices to be powered by light.

The European Commission is set to contribute one third of the funding to the projects and national funding agencies will cover the rest.

Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, said: "I'm happy that research on technology relevant to delivering super-fast internet speeds to the home and businesses of 500 million Europeans is taking off.

"Such technology could have a crucial role to play in meeting Europe's broadband needs far into the future."

The research projects will run for two to three years and focus on how components (eg transceivers, amplifiers and routers) and IT systems can deliver speeds of 1Gbps, while reducing the operational cost.

One of the projects, dubbed ALOHA, aims to enable ultra-high-speed transmission of data through upgrading the transmission capacity of broadband semiconductors (that is, optic lasers). It is hoped that transmission rates could reach up to 10Gbps.