During the IST 2000, the European Commission launched the project Gigabit European Academic Network of research and education network interconnections.
GEANT (Gigabit European Academic Network), the European project of research and education networks interconnections, was launched on Nov. 6 during the IST 2000 taking place in Nice Acropolis. The project was launched by the European Commission which plans to place the European researchers in high flow network: 2.5 Gbits/s.
The French Minister of Research, Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg declared in video-conference from Paris, 'it was one of the main stages for the creation of a European Research Space'…/…'The increase in popularity of network interconnection flows whose performance will be multiplied by 16 within some months, must allow to meet the stakes in fields like researches on genome or particles physics. The capacity will be able to reach quickly several tens of gigabits a second'.
The memorandum which constitutes the birth act of the project was signed at Nice-Acropolis by Erkki Liikanen, European commissary for firm and information society, and will be co-signed later by the French minister. According to the text, co-financing of the project was planned: 160 million euros by the states-members and 80 million euros by the European Commission. These high flow networks which are going to be built will also allow to strengthen the increase in popularity of the e-learning with the emergence of numerous online training offers and to make technically viable initiatives as the ones of digital campus ministries of research and education launch. A GEANT step for the Information Society.