UNIC: UNIversal satellite home Connection
Servizi audio-video-dati interattivi
The UNIC Project develops technologies for interactive triple-play (audio-video-data) services. Users receive the services on common television sets, while data is transmitted over satellite. Satellite transmission covers all homes in Europe, including those in disadvantaged or rural areas, where no broadband services are available.
The UNIC Project integrates state-of-the-art satellite technologies for Direct-To-Home (DTH) television services with terrestrial-network-based IP services (e.g. VoIP). The result is a real alternative to traditional or emergent service access systems, such as terrestrial networks, digital terrestrial television and IPTV platforms.
MBI's role
As a project partner MBI is responsible for the coordination of the development of the whole system architecture, as well as for the development of the service centre, the content distribution system and the collective gateway. The collective gateway is an innovative device, which has been fully designed and developed by MBI. The system can carry out several management tasks, such as sharing the access to the interactive services between groups of users connected through a decoder and a television set. This example can be applied to groups of houses, small villages, department stores, etc.
The Partners
UNIC is a Specific Research Targeted Project (STREP) of the European Union's 6th Framework Programme with a total budget of over 6 million Euro. UNIC will last 30 months and will end on 31st July 2008 after a six-month test phase. The consortium includes some of the most important European companies and research centres in the field: Thales Alenia Space France, Eutelsat, the "Centro per la ricerca e l’innovazione tecnologica della RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana" (CRIT - The Research Centre of the Italian National Broadcasting Company) , Motorola, WIND, the "Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales" (CNES) in France, the University of Pisa, University College London.