DENMARK DESIGNS TOMORROW’S WIRELESS WORLD

WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY: The city of Aalborg in northern Denmark is a beacon of research and development in wireless technology. State-of-the-art research involving the university and a cluster of innovative companies is pioneering technology that will be used in 10-15 years’ time

What started as the development of a relatively simple ship’s radio in the middle of the last century has now evolved into a research and development environment for wireless technology on a global scale. In Aalborg today, one development project after another is being started, which will evolve into the latest thing in the mobile and wireless world.

Designing the future
The wireless cluster around Aalborg, which comprises around 25 companies providing more than 3,000 high-tech jobs, has been developed in a close partnership between Aalborg University and the local public authorities. Aalborg University is today recognised in the global wireless industry as a beacon of research and development. It was here the foundations for the first mobile phones were laid, and where second generation mobile technology began. And it is here that the fourth generation is on the drawing board, in preparation for everyday life in 10-15 years’ time.

Unique combination
“The combination of state-of-the-art research at university level and an innovative and competent business world, where global companies like Texas Instruments, Nokia, Motorola, Thrane & Thrane, RTX Telecom and a number of smaller Danish companies have placed development centres, is simply unique,” says Jørgen Hedevang, secretariat director of the umbrella organisation NorCOM, the Association of mobile and wireless industry located in Northern Denmark.

“There is an interplay and cross-fertili-sation of ideas and experience across disciplines and interests, which is hard to find elsewhere in the world.”

The environment also reflects the intense and often turbulent development that has taken place in the industry. Small entrepreneurial companies have grown into big ones in a few years, have been acquired and sold on, and mergers or closedowns and reestablishments have been the order of the day.

“There is a dynamism in the area which attracts the best minds from the whole world,” says Jørgen Hedevang. “For example, the development department at Texas Instruments has people from the US, Japan, Germany, France, In-dia and China. You can’t get more international than that.”

http://www.norcom.com