The EUCCS Preparation project is intended to lay the groundwork for public safety broadband roaming across European national borders. Or, in the words of a spokesperson for the project a “pan-European mission critical high-capacity mobile communication system for law enforcement, emergency response and all public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) responders.”
Discussing the awards, the spokesperson continued: “The first contract period concludes on 30th June 2025. Eight instances of 3GPP standardised mission critical services [MCX] will be managed by eight of our 15 partnering national authorities.
“These systems will be evaluated by a series of tests and activities to assess the functionality, and initial interconnection between contractor solutions.”
Moving onto the second contract phase - lasting from July to September of next year -, the spokesperson continued: “[This] will work towards increasing the number of nationally managed MCX services, to include four more countries, and working towards interconnection between the different standardised deployments, managed by the different national authorities.”
According to the organisation, the first phase will see each awarded team providing MCX services for two countries, as well as interconnection between them. This is to “realise international communication groups between the differently managed systems.”
Leonardo will provide services to Suomen Erillisverkot in Finland and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (Ireland), while Airbus will work with Kentro Meleton Asfaleias (Greece) and Agence des Communications Mobiles Opérationnelles de Sécurité et de Secours in France.
Frequentis meanwhile will provide services to Myndigheten for Samhallsskydd Och Beredskap, Karolinen in Sweden as well as the Netherlands National Police, with Teltronic provisioning Ministerio dell'Interno (Italy) and Belgium’s ASTRID.
The spokesperson said: “These testbeds will then be incrementally interconnected to assess the interoperability between different systems. They will be tested according to the national capabilities of the countries involved.
“This will build the confidence in the technical maturity of the 3GPP MCX services and will support, in the near future, the establishment of the EUCCS."
The solutions will also be evaluated by “a large group of practitioners” from across European emergency services.
