Cluster of Excellence UMIC
The initial goal of the UMIC cluster was to enable future Ultra High-Speed Mobile Information and Communication, with the main vision of broadband wireless internet access at reasonable access costs triggering the next wave of economic and innovation growth. Today it is indeed the low cost access, predominantly in the form of flat data rates, which drives the exponentially increasing mobile Internet access. This has led to a strong cost pressure on operators and equipment providers.
Researching technologies that address these problems has thus been the right approach. Over time mobile internet access grew rapidly. UMIC reacted to this with a shift in the focus to Universal Mobile Access to Information and Communication, thus putting more emphasis on the user perspective with technologies supporting universal mobile access.