N4C and eINCLUSION

Many regions do not have access to the optical fibres, copper cables and radio waves linking up the world’s networks. Remote regions are often vast and sparsely populated, with a relatively poor economic base so that deployment of conventional access technologies is not viable.  Combined with the huge distances involved, this means that constant connectivity will not be made available in these regions.

The Networking for Communications Challenged Communities () project, is funded from 2008 to 2011 under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme. 

N4C aims to use existing, novel technologies in these remote areas by creating an 'opportunistic networking architecture' (ONA) to exploit these communication opportunities and to set up two test beds in:  

• Swedish Lapland
• Kocevje region of the Slovenian mountain

Application tests will be carried out on:  

• Reindeer (animal tracking) 

• Hikers (a pod cast application)

• Meteorological data

N4C will present research results at seminars and international workshops on deployment and technical issues.  The project will also include a business - deployment plan for the DTN network, the test beds and applications.

The project team will provide project material in Swedish, Sámi and Slovenian languages about the tests. To offer information to the Finnish and the Russian Sámi population, we will also provide material in those languages.

For general public in Europe we will make "summaries" of the web page and our newsletters in major European languages. Through these publishing plans we hope to provide continuous reporting of results from the studies. 

Welcome to N4C!

Maria Udén