On Friday 6th November 2020, PSCE signed a grant agreement with European GNSS Agency (GSA https://www.gsa.europa.eu/) to coordinate the BroadGNSS Pre-Commercial Procurement programme.
BroadGNSS will procure innovative solutions for Applications, Synchronisation and Monitoring of Critical Mobile Broadband Communication Infrastructure and Information Assets for Public Protection and Disaster Recovery (PPDR) Operations.
The project brings together 3 members of a joint procurement team:
• French Ministry of Interior (lead procurer)
• Estonian Infocommunication Foundation
• Finnish Erillisverkot
supported by PSCE, and Austrian GNSS experts, OHB Digital.
This agreement provides for a total budget of €3.6Million over 40months, commencing from 1st December 2020.
€2.5Million is reserved for pre-commercial procurement of innovation solutions. This budget will be made available to industry following an open and competitive process. This challenge to industry will seek innovative solutions to apply EGNSS to further improve the overall capability of trustworthy information exchange, enabled by new broadband mobile communication.
BroadGNSS will consult key government stakeholders across Europe in order 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. 3 innovative prototypes are now in development to address the challenge to enable a pan-European mobile broadband system for PPDR. Prototypes are due to be evaluated in April, 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: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/innovation-procurement
For up to date information on BroadGNSS events, please refer to www.broadgnss-info.eu
For details of BroadMap and BroadWay progress, please click here www.broadmap.eu, www.broadway-info.eu