In FP7 the European Commission has already launched more than 10 EU projects to explore the technological options available leading to the future generation of “wired” (optical) and “wireless” communications, adding up toover €50m for research on 5G technologies  with a view to having deployable systems by 2020.

These include:

METIS, 5GNOW,iJOIN,TROPIC,Mobile Cloud Networking,COMBO,CROWD,MOTO andPHYLAWS

These EU research projects address the architecture and functionality needs for 5G / beyond 4G networks.

The cluster of EU projects in theRadio Access and Spectrum(RAS) area for example, is looking more deeply into the 5G radio network architecture issues and the first results of their analysis are available in dedicatedwhite paper.

Overall EU investments from 2007 to 2013 amount to more than €600m in research on future networks, half of which is allocated to wireless technologies contributing to development of 4G and beyond 4G.