Horizon 2020: h2020-sga-infra-geant-2018 topic [b] increase of long-term backbone capacity
The GN4 Phase 3 Network (GN4-3N) proposal for part b of the third Specific Grant Agreement (SGA3(b) is made in response to the H2020-SGA-INFRA-GEANT-2018 (Topic [b] Research and Education Networking) call, received 17 October 2018, under the 68-month Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in April 2015.  It is  proposed to last 48 months to implement, as the call requests, a very ambitious restructuring of the backbone network operated by GÉANT in order to provide equal access to clouds and other e-infrastructure services in the European research area and beyond.  It will improve the overall resilience and reliability of the GÉANT network significantly and offer a base for future improvements in access, transmission speeds and capacity wherever needed.
The outcome of GN4-3N project will offer uniform network access and choice of services to many more partners, eliminating the ""digital divide"" wherever technically and economically feasible. 
This project proposal is based on technical and economic studies carried out during 2017-2018 in the GN4-2 project which have given the Consortium clarity on the resourcing, financial and effort, needed to realise the huge ambition of this undertaking.  It exclusively covers the engineering, procurement, acquisition and installation of the new backbone network. The day-to-day network operations as the elements of it is commissioned is the responsibility of the teams described in accompanying the GN4-3 project.
The GN4-3 and GN4-3N proposals are intimately connected through common teams and the technical, management and procurement expertise built-up over previous GN projects. This is what makes this ambitious proposal realistic. GN4-3N and GN4-3 have simply had to be proposed as distinct projects, due to the different funding model (with no depreciation) to be used in GN4-3N project.