The 2004 ARTES-3 Annual Plan of Activities identifies in particular developments in support of multimedia services on existing or planned infrastructures; development of satellite interactive terminals, gateways, network control elements, and modems/codecs for terminals and gateways.
Attention is drawn to a specific development opportunity in the area of DVB-RCS user terminals. The SatLabs Group 2 , aiming to reduce the cost of user terminals, concluded that a possible way to reduce cost would be to have common components optimised for DVB-RCS. This would also allow the aggregation of demand and consequently larger production volumes. The SatLabs Group identified a number of key components for which they agreed on common specifications. These specifications were provided to ESA as recommendations for further development. Information about the development opportunity and the component specifications can be found in the Satlabs group web site http://www.satlabs.org/.
Element 3 of the ESA ARTES Programme is to assist European and Canadian industry, satellite operators, service providers and other interested parties in their efforts to become global players in the promising market of multimedia services by satellite. The support actions are being initiated along three programme lines:
Line 1: Development of the Multimedia Market
Line 2: Development of Satcom System Elements
Line 3: Pioneering Novel Systems
A description of how this program Element relates to Programme Lines, which cover the main strategic areas of the Telecom Department, can be found online (see link on the right). As elaborated in the ARTES-3 programme proposal, support will only be granted to Tenderers who are visibly committed towards a future commercial exploitation of the developments supported by Artes 3 and who are prepared to contribute financially to it.
The tendering period is from 20 February 2004 until 19 April.
Please refer to EMITS for more information.
