Agencies plans commercial procurement of innovative solutions

The European GNSS Agency (GSA ) is joining with Public Safety Communication Europe (PSCE) to coordinate the BroadGNSS Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) program.

BroadGNSS will procure innovative solutions for applications, synchronization and monitoring of critical mobile broadband communication infrastructure and information assets for public protection and disaster recovery (PPDR) Operations.

The project brings together three members of a joint procurement team:

• French Ministry of Interior (lead procurer)
• Estonian Infocommunication Foundation
• Finnish Erillisverkot

The team will be supported by PSCE and Austrian GNSS company OHB Digital.

The agreement provides for a total budget of €3.6 million over 40 months, beginning this Dec. 1. Of that, €2.5 million is reserved for pre-commercial procurement of innovation solutions. This budget will be made available to industry following an open and competitive process.

BroadGNSS will seek innovative solutions to apply European GNSS to further improve the overall capability of trustworthy information exchange, enabled by new broadband mobile communication.

BroadGNSS will consult key government stakeholders across Europe to scope the specific objectives of the PCP procurement. A “prior information notice” will be released to initiate consultation with innovative industry to contribute their knowledge and capabilities to help our team to prepare a formal request for tender to be released later next year.

BroadGNSS will build upon the success of the BroadWay PCP, which is currently in the prototyping phase. Three innovative prototypes are now in development to address the challenge to enable a pan-European mobile broadband system for PPDR. Prototypes will be evaluated in April 2021, with interim demonstrations to the BroadWay group of procurers this month (November). These prototypes are developed under the leadership of key industry heavyweights, Airbus, Frequentis and Leonardo.

The combination of the results of BroadWay and BroadGNSS will contribute to provide improved mission critical services to public safety responders.

Details of the Pre-Commercial Procurement process can be found on the European Commission website. For up to date information on BroadGNSS events, go to www.broadgnss-info.eu.