SMARTS: SMEs and Regional Telecom Support

    

http://cordis.europa.eu/infowin/acts/rus/projects/ac114.htm

FOURTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
ACTS - Advanced Communications Technologies And Services Dgxiii – Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research, (Ac114)

Duration: 1996-1998

Scientific Responsible: Prof. Maria Giaoutzi (giaoutsi@central.ntua.gr)

The Project Objectives

The strategic objective of the project is to increase the participation of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the work and exploitation, and subsequent benefits, of results of ACTS.

The project achieves these strategic goals by adopting three strategies aimed at mitigating the barriers of remoteness, poor infrastructure, and the inability to fund the overhead of direct partnership in ACTS projects by:

- Organising a "participation broker" based on Advanced Communications Technologies and Services driven by the needs of SMEs; and, offering services via a European network of regional Points of Presence (PoPs) that provide services to more then 5000 SMEs;
- Performing a News and Information Service on topics and items related to ACTS and advanced communications that are of particular interest to SMEs seeking to participate in ACTS;
- Actively promoting the participation of SMEs in the work of ACTS by means of a campaign that increases the awareness among SMEs of the opportunities offered in advanced communications, by brokering consortia with SME participation, and by offering on-line SME support services to ease their burden and the overhead costs of participation. The SMARTS multilingual translation tool for instance offers through five European language pairs an additional advantage to the daily business of the SMEs.

Partners:

1. Teleport Sachsen-Anhalt GmbH, (TSA)-Germany (Project Leader)
2. Cote d’Azur Developpement, (CAD)-France
3. North West Labs, (NWLABS), Ireland
4. Burger BreedBand net vzw, (BBN)
5. PONTON European Media Art Lab, (PONTON), Germany
6. Wordbank Ltd, (Wordbank)-UK
7. Otaniemi Science Park Ltd., (Otaniemi)
8. Salzburger Technologiezentrum, (TechnoZ)- Austria
9. NCSR Demokritos, (Demokritos) - Greece
10. NTUA - Greece
11. Parque Technologico de Galicia, (PTG)- Spain
12. Technologie Centrum Chemnitz GmbH , (TCC|)
13. Marketing Invest Consult Plovdiv Ltd.,(PLOVDIV)
14. University of Trento , (Unitrento)-Italy
15. Fakt Initio GbR, (Initio)
16. LETI Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, (LETI)-Russia
17. Moscow State University REDLAB, (REDLAB)-Russia
18. Centre International de Communication Avancee, (CICA)-France
19. Technologie und Standort Agentur Salzburg, (TechnoS)-Austria