European Commission funds GEANT 2.5 Gbit/s network with 80 million euroBrussels 04 August 2000 The European Commission has decide to fund the GEANT network proposed by DANTE and the 25 national and regional European research and education networks (NRENs). It is now in the final stages of contract negotiation with the European Commission, which should lead to a financial contribution to the project of 80 million euro over four years by the EC.
Over 90 organisations responded to a Call for Expressions of
Interest, the first stage in the tendering process for the supply
of service components which will be integrated to form the GEANT
service. An Invitation to Tender (ITT)
was issued on July 7, 2000 to 86 potential suppliers with a
deadline for responses of September 29, 2000. The principal requirement in the ITT is for data transmission
capacity at 2.5 Gbit/s between a number of European countries (the
initial target is 8) with the possibility of increasing the number
of countries connected at this speed and of upgrading circuits to
10 Gbit/s and then several tens of Gbit/s over a four year period. Other sections of the ITT deal with lower speed circuits, including
those required to connect six countries which have no connection to
TEN-155, with housing of GEANT Points of Presence and with network
management services. For more information check in at the Dante web site
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