Bitland Enterprise offers a viable option for the deployment and showcasing of cutting-edge technology projects, using the distinctive Faroese geography and demographics as the physical framework for ultimate 'reality-testing'.

What began as a business consultant’s sporadic contacts with a senior manager of a global semiconductor giant, two years later turned into an incorporated joint venture of Faroese information and communication technology companies reaching out to attract international development project partners.

“We are encouraging ICT companies, researchers and investors to take a closer look at the enticing opportunities that lay latent in research and development projects carried out in the right environment,” said Bitland’s executive manager, Ólavur Gregersen.

“Bitland Enterprise is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing new ways of  deployment for advanced technology,” he added. “Our main focus is on projects with clear relevance to potential commercialization and consumer value.”

What makes Bitland appealing to project partners, according to Mr Gregersen, is the potentially valuable knowledge that can be gained from research and development under such special conditions as those present in the Faroes. “Not only are we offering an extremely distinct geographical area,” he added.

“The Faroes have a complete demographic, natural and technological environment, all in miniature, which makes them practically and financially ideal for many types of research and development projects.”

Seeking to attract leading ICT companies, research institutes and venture capitalists, the Bitland Enterprise envisions such organizations collaborating in order to maximize the potential of leading edge information and communications technology through the deployment of successful value-added utilization strategies and world-class technology showcasing in the Faroe Islands.

‘A discreet setting’: Founded in February 2004, the Bitland Enterprise has launched nine projects in its first year, some of which are completed while others are still running. One of these projects is the ‘Safety at Sea’ project, the purpose of which is to develop a conceptual scheme for personal safety at sea that exploits new telecommunication opportunities.

Another example is a deployment experiment involving telecommunication and wireless technology. “By forging an early strategic alliance and utilizing the distinctive showcase and market-testing potential of the Faroe Islands,” a project description reads, “(…) and Interactive Device, together, can emerge as the unquestioned international leader in mobile, WiMax-certified handheld communications devices and the leading source of a cost-effective, high-speed, robust, scalable and secure end-to-end solution with high quality of service and customer care subscriber management features.”

The description continued: “The goal of the (…) Project [is] to develop a WiMax-certified, thin-client handheld device using WiMax-enabled silicon and ultimately capable of supporting multiple 4G technologies; to showcase a proof of concept business model for a mobile, scalable, end-to-end thin-client solution for worldwide markets with customer care managed by (…) proprietary ISMS software, and to augment and showcase the current secure and dynamic hosting capacity (…).”

In terms of general feasibility for technology-intensive development projects, Mr Gregersen said that contributing factors constituting a competitive Faroese advantage are identified by a number of geographical, cultural, economic, technological and political features.

“The country is geographically and culturally distinct, and an autonomous, self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, but not a member of the EU,” he said.

 “The Faroes have exclusive treaties governing trade, fisheries and other international issues. We have a 20 percent corporate tax which is very low by OECD standards. Crime is negligible; the arts are flourishing. We have a highly advanced and liberalized telecommunications infrastructure, a super-fast undersea fiber optic cable linking to Iceland and Scotland, providing nearly unlimited broadband connection to the rest of the world. Digital media broadcasting is highly developed; wireless connectivity is common and about 75 percent of all households have a least one computer; well above half of the total population are on-line, and so forth.

“It all adds up to the fact that the Faroes offer a great environment in which to test new concepts in a real-life, yet in a discreet and contained setting.”

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