Content:
1) New Celtic Call 5 will officially start on 22 January 2007
2) Celtic Call 5 Information Day and Celtic Event 2007
3) Successful closure of several Celtic Projects

1) Celtic Call 5 - official launch on 22 January

The new Celtic Call 5 will officially be launched on 22 January 2007. The submission deadline for Proposal Outlines is on 22 May 2007. Call details and online submission access are found at: http://www.celtic-initiative.org/Project_calls/Call5/call-5-PO.asp. The two-phase Call process will require for the successful proposal outline a full project proposal to be submitted in the second phase of Call 5, which will start in July 2007 until 5 October 2007. It envisages project start from early 2008. As early announcements, Information about intended proposal submissions are requested until 10 May 2007.

As Celtic Call 5 will run largely in parallel to the FP7 IST calls it is suggested that both calls are taken into consideration when preparing proposals. This approach in defining a consistent and coordinated concept of related projects - but also as a prevision of possible failures of IST submissions - could largely improve the success rate of submissions and could achieve a better coverage of planned research topics, e.g. as defined in the Strategic Research Agendas, in particular those from eMobility, NEM, NESSI, and ISI.

2) Celtic Call 5 Information Day and Celtic Event 2007

Please be reminded that the registration deadline for the Celtic Information Day, which will be held on 21 February 2007 in Berlin, is approaching soon. The Celtic Information Day is intended to support the successful preparation of Call-5 proposals. Experts and potential project partners interested to present their project ideas and looking for interested consortium partners are invited to register for this Information Day as soon as possible. The Information Day is open to the public and is free of charge. Space capacity is limited to 100 people. Booking is requested until 12 February 2007. Further information and a link to register is available at: www.celtic-initiative.org/Events/InfoDay-07/celtic_information_day_07.asp.

In connection with the Celtic Information day Celtic organises its second Event 2007 on 22 and 23 February at the same premises in Berlin. The scope of the conference is to bring together key players from industry, research, public authorities, and politics to present and discuss the current evolution of the Celtic Initiative and its running projects. In several high-level presentations future evolution scenarios for next generation telecommunications networks, services and systems will be presented and the role of Celtic in the European research community for these scenarios will be discussed. To attend this event a personal information is necessary. Further information on the Event and possibilities for obtaining a personal invitation are given at: http://www.celtic-initiative.org/Events/Celtic-Event07-Berlin/welcome.asp. This Event is limited to 200 people.

3) Successful closure of several Celtic projects

By end of 2006 11 Celtic projects of Call 1 (started in 2004) and one project of Call 2 (started in 2005) were successfully closed. The achieved results and deliverables, that generated also several patents and contributed to numerous standards and conferences, were, generally, very satisfactory. A number of the results also resulted in concrete new products that are already or will soon come on the market.

These satisfactory results prove that Celtic projects are focusing on the right topics at the right time. It is expected that also the still running projects and the new projects of Call 4 that will start soon will continue the success line of Celtic. More details on the projects can be found at http://www.celtic-initiative.org/Projects/project-info.asp and the linked individual project web sites.