Over the next 12 months we will invest up to £18m in this competition, which challenges businesses to develop an internet with a sustainable economic future from which all participants will benefit. To this end, we have identified three challenge areas:

• people
• digital content and services
• networks.

In this first round, we anticipate providing up to £10m to support collaborations between industry sectors, which must substantially address at least two of these challenge areas. The specific challenges are outlined in table 1 opposite. We will invest at least 50% of our budget in projects that address all three challenges. In this round we will fund two types of project addressing these challenge areas, both attracting 50% public funding:

• strategic research and development projects
• ground-breaking trials.

This round of the competition is open to all UK-based companies and research organisations in business-led consortia, and may be of particular interest to those designing and operating internet networks, or the services that operate over them, and those who are concerned with how digital content is distributed to, and used by, customers. We will be funding:

• fast-track projects: up to £100k in total project value. These should be completed within 12 months, and
• mainstream projects: more than £100k in total project value. These will last from about 12 months up to a maximum of 24 months.