Smart internet 2010: a smart internet technology CRC report

The origins of this Smart Internet Technology CRC project reside within a CRC management discussion in 2003 that involved researchers and sponsors about the need to construct a credible and imaginative research report about Internet futures. The group recalled the fine work conducted by the National Telecommunications Planning Unit in the early 1970s about 'planning new services for markets that do not exist, complex technologies that are rapidly changing and a socio-economic environment which widely agreed is becoming unstable and turbulent.' After two and a half years of thorough investigation the NTP’s seminal report Telecom 2000 was delivered in December 1975. A quarter of a century later the original Project Director of Telecom 2000, Tony Newstead, in hindsight reviewed their remarkably astute findings. Newstead added: 'the main benefits of such wide ranging studies flow not so much from forecasts made as from insights gained along the way.' Though there are some important differences between the methodology and approach of this project, Smart Internet 2010, and its forerunner, Telecom 2000, their overall objectives are comparable. [Preface]