Promoting the use of public transport (PT) is considered to be an effective way to reduce the number of passenger cars. The concept of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), which began in Europe and is now spreading rapidly around the world, is expected to help to improve the convenience of PT on the viewpoint of users, using the latest information communication technology and Internet of Things technologies. This paper outlines the concept of MaaS in Europe and the efforts made at the policy level. It also focuses on the development of MaaS from the viewpoint of promoting the use of PT in Japan.

This paper provides insights on the status of broadband optical access market and technologies in Europe and on the expected trends for the next generation optical access networks. The final target for most operators, cities or any other player is of course FTTH (Fibre To The Home) deployment although we can expect intermediate steps with copper or wireless technologies. Among the two candidate architectures for FTTH, PON (Passive Optical Network) is by far the most attractive and cost effective solution. We also demonstrate that Ethernet based optical access network is very adequate to all-IP networks without any incidence on the level of quality of service. Finally, we provide feedback from a FTTH pilot network in Colmar (France) based on Gigabit Ethernet PON technology. The interest of this pilot lies on the level of functionality required for broadband optical access networks but also on the development of new home network configurations.

Superconductivity and superconducting electronics have quite a prominent place in the European research environment and can look back onto a successful history. In recent years the European Framework programs helped to enhance the interaction between the different national research institutions, universities and industry. For applications of superconductivity this was accomplished by the European Network of Excellence SCENET and its sister organization ESAS. In this context a virtual European foundry network was established (Fluxonics), which forms a platform for the superconducting electronics activities in Europe and realizes support for the design and the fabrication of superconducting circuits for research laboratories and industry. Lately quite some development on the digital side and the cooling of superconducting electronics devices has taken place in Europe; most of it within the Fluxonics network. Some of these advances will be reported in this overview article.

This paper presents an overview of four on-going European research projects in the field of mobile and wireless communications leading to the next generations of wireless communications. The projects started in 2004. They investigate requirements and definition of access technology, network architecture, antennas and propagation, security, services, applications and socio-economic impact.