Towards a Unified Global ICT Infrastructure

A successful evolution towards a unified global WAN platform allowing for the coexistence and interoperability of all kind of services requires careful planning of the next generation global cooperative wired and wireless information infrastructure.The absence of commonly agreed upon and adopted design principles, allowing for smooth and cost efficient scalability without loss of control over the structurally based properties may prevent or seriously delay this evolution and as consequence be a barrier for introduction of new foreseen types of demanding services. Some of the key problems to be solved can be found in the interrelation between communication, connectivity and convergence.This paper will focus on steps to be taken in planning the physical infrastructure as a prerequisite for a successful evolution. Ole Brun Madsen is born in 1942 in Denmark and received his M.Sc. in Mathematics & Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen (1962–1972) researcher and from 1968 head of the Computer Science Laboratory at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. (1972–1981) head of the Development Department, RECAU, the Regional Computing Centre at Århus University (1981–1996). Head of the Data Network Section and Head of the Network Infrastructure Strategy section at Jutland Telephone (1996–1999). Manager for Infrastructure Network Technology and Strategy at TDC, Tele Denmark (1999-). Professor in Distributed real-time Systems and from 2004 as Head of CNP, Center for Network Planning and Co-director for CTIF, Center for TeleInFrastructur at Aalborg University. He has been project leader for a number of national and international R&D projects and acted in high level advisory tasks within the European Commission on the R&D framework programmes in DGXIII and with United Nations UNDP activities. Present research is focused on Infrastructure Architecture and Modelling Tools for Network Analysis and Design