The Internet of Things is evolving around a plethora of vertical platforms, each specifically suited to a given scenario and often adopting proprietary communications, device and resource control protocols. The emerging need for crossdomain IoT applications and services highlights the necessity of interoperability across IoT platforms for a unified and secure sharing of and access to sensing/actuating resources. This position paper describes the current state of the IoT landscape, the opportunities that appear towards its sustainable evolution as well as the challenges that need to be addressed. In this context, the vision and objectives of the H2020 symbIoTe project are also presented; symbIoTe aims at the interoperability of IoT platforms by offering a flexible interoperability framework that will allow i) vertical IoT platforms to cooperate, ii) collaborative IoT platforms to form IoT-platform federations for exchange of resources and iii) independent developers to create innovative and cross-domain applications.

The focus of research into 5G networks to date has been largely on the required advances in network architectures, technologies, and infrastructures. Less effort has been put on the applications and services that will make use of and exploit the flexibility of 5G networks built upon the concept of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). Media-based applications are amongst the most demanding services, requiring large bandwidths for high Manuscript

The challenge before reaching the production stage for 5G is to assess its performance in large-scale facilities. EU-funded 5G PPP project 5G EVE is addressing this challenge by building a distributed and interworking 5G endto-end facility in Europe across various sites. In this paper we explain the architecture of the 5G EVE end-to-end facility and present each site with their respective features, including the interworking among them, which provides a clear add-on to country-based trials. The 5G EVE site facilities are designed to offer automated network slice deployment tools and a new validation framework. This framework will offer tools for testing 5G radio and various core solutions. It will also allow experimenting and benchmarking different classes of end-toend network slices and services. These services are defined by a set of selected vertical use cases in sectors like energy, transport, smart cities, tourism, and manufacturing (Industry 4.0). 5G EVE's large-scale trials are being deployed in four European countries: Italy, France, Spain, and Greece.

Network slicing has emerged as a major new networking paradigm for meeting the diverse requirements of various vertical businesses in virtualised and softwarised 5G networks. SliceNet is a project of the EU 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) and focuses on network slicing as a cornerstone technology in 5G networks, and addresses the associated challenges in managing, controlling and orchestrating the new services for users especially vertical sectors, thereby maximising the potential of 5G infrastructures and their services by leveraging advanced software networking and cognitive network management. This paper presents the vision of the SliceNet project, highlighting the gaps in existing work and challenges, the proposed overall architecture, proposed technical approaches, and use cases.

Hexa-X will pave the way to the next generation of wireless networks (Hexa) by explorative research (X). The Hexa-X vision is to connect human, physical, and digital worlds with a fabric of sixth generation (6G) key enablers. The vision is driven by the ambition to contribute to objectives of growth, global sustainability, trustworthiness, and digital inclusion. Key 6G value indicators and use cases are defined against the background of technology push, society and industry pull as well as objectives of technology sovereignty. Key areas of research have been formulated accordingly to include connecting intelligence, network of networks, sustainability, global service coverage, extreme experience, and trustworthiness. Critical technology enablers for 6G are developed in the project including, sub-THz transceiver technologies, accurate stand-alone positioning and radio-based imaging, improved radio performance, artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) inspired radio access network (RAN) technologies, future network architectures and special purpose solutions including future ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) schemes. Besides technology enablers, early trials will be carried out to help assess viability and performance aspects of the key technology enablers. The 6G Hexa-X project is integral part of European and global research effort to help define the best possible next generation of networks.