Big progress has been done in the last years in the development of federated research infrastructures in telecommunications in Europe, through the FIRE program. More recently, the FIBRE project made possible the interconnection of research installations through optical fiber in Europe and Brazil. However, research in telecommunications continues to be largely segregated in optical or wireless networks domains, and the researchers rarely cross the border between them. It is argued in the FUTEBOL project that the needs of future telecommunications systems, for high data rates applications in smart mobile devices, machine to machine communications or Internet of Things, or even backhaul requirements caused by the densification of mobile networks, require the co-design of wireless access networks and optical backhaul/backbones.

The talk will present briefly the progress of the project so far, including the deployed infrastructure and the developed control framework that has been federated according to FIRE principles and interconnected by the FIBRE technology.