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Shaping Europe’s digital future
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Next Generation Internet innovation catalogue

The Next Generation Internet Initiative has published an online catalogue showcasing technology solutions.

After three years of operation, the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative is delivering a number of concrete technology solutions across a wide range of technology areas. These solutions are now accessible through an online catalogue, presenting hardware, software and apps solutions to build an Internet fit for the digital age, fostering diversity, decentralisation and inclusivity.

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative is a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the development and evolution of the Internet into an Internet of Humans. An Internet that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security and inclusion, while reflecting the values and the norms all citizens enjoy in Europe.

The catalogue presents over 500 NGI solutions developed by Europe’s top Internet talent. The solutions are all financed through NGI, which has so far engaged over 1,000 innovators.

Thanks to the NGI funding mechanism, innovators are granted easy access to small and medium sized grants, mentorship and access to markets. Many work with open source solutions and would otherwise struggle to find time or funding to pursue their endeavour. Their solutions, designed to overcome the limitations of today’s Internet with challenges around data ownership and privacy concerns, are now available in an online catalogue.

The new catalogue includes a broad range of technology building blocks that can be used in any sector, from health, energy, supply chains, research to responsible media platforms. The searchable catalogue allows for a quick discovery of results covering a wide variety of cutting edge technologies, in the following categories:

  • Trustworthy hardware and manufacturing
  • Network infrastructure, including routing, peer-to-peer and virtual private networking
  • Software engineering, protocols, interoperability, cryptography, algorithms, proofs
  • Operating systems, firmware and virtualization
  • Measurement, monitoring, analysis and abuse handling
  • Middleware and identity
  • Decentralised solutions, including blockchain and distributed ledger technologies
  • Data and machine learning
  • Services and applications such as email, instant messaging, video chat and collaboration;
  • Vertical use cases, improving search and discovery and community building.

The new catalogue also allows the NGI solutions to be easily identified by country, keyword, status and the NGI intermediary project that selected and funded it.

Find out more about these innovative solutions in the catalogue

Background

Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the development of the Internet into an Internet of humans. NGI unites a vibrant community of Internet innovators and stakeholders around a common goal: building an Internet that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security and inclusion, and reflects the values and the norms that we enjoy in Europe.

Initial European Commission investment in NGI research and innovation of more than €250m (2018-2020) has already supported more than 1,000 Internet researchers and innovators involved in many hundreds of projects. Support goes beyond financing, to mentoring and the journey from an idea to a real business.

The European Commission announced renewed EU funding for NGI under Horizon Europe. For the period 2021-2022, the European Commission is dedicating €62 million to support top Internet innovators in the areas of:

  • trust and data sovereignty on the Internet;
  • trustworthy open search and discovery;
  • Internet architecture and decentralised technologies;
  • enhanced EU-US and EU-Canada cooperation and collaboration.