BroadWay's market consultation begins

The BroadWay group of procurers is to hold briefings to inform industry about European public safety broadband plans, and seek feedback on innovative technologies.

BroadWay is a team of 11 procurers from 11 European countries comprising national ministries and agencies responsible for communication services used by 1.4 million public safety responders.

The group has come together with the common challenge to procure innovation activity to enable a pan-European broadband mobile system for use by public safety responders.

BroadWay has issued an invitation to suppliers to assist the group of procurers to better understand the state-of-the-art and market status of broadband mobile for public safety.

Briefing events will be held online on 20 July and 9 August, with two briefing meetings to be held in Brussels, on 13 and 18 September. An online questionnaire will be open until 21 September to enable potential suppliers to give their opinions.

More information about the events is available on the BroadWay website.

The European Commission signed the BroadWay agreement in May 2018, and the journey has now begun to equip Europe with broadband mobile for public safety.

The group of procurers has agreed to carry out a joint pre-commercial procurement to find solutions to enable pan-European mobile broadband technologies. At least 50 responder practitioner organisations across 17 countries will evaluate those procured solutions in a pilot system to be developed within the 2021 timeframe.

Over the next four years, the BroadWay procurement team will carry out a pre-commercial procurement that will seek to procure innovation, to create the new solutions needed to achieve the BroadWay common challenge.

BroadWay follows the success of the BroadMap project that first brought together a similar team to study what is needed from this pre-commercial procurement.

The BroadWay team is also seeking global cooperation and has already established links with countries outside of Europe. On 23–24 May, the BroadWay coordinator organisation — Public Safety Communication Europe (PSCE) — hosted its regular biannual conference in Brussels. This was followed by an international meeting, hosted together with FirstNet, US.

The international meeting brought together 20 countries including the BroadWay group, national projects from individual European countries, US FirstNet, UK ESN, South Korea SafeNet, Japan, Canada and Australia.

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