BroadWay: a new solution for public safety

29 July 2020

The PPDR4Europe consortium, led by Leonardo, was admitted to the second phase of the Broadway project together with the consortia led by Airbus and Frequentis.

Broadway is the project managed by the European Ministries and Police Forces to define the standard for secure communications, and to select two associated compliant solutions. The project will affect 3.5 million law enforcement users and security operators.

Broadway is funded by the European Union and is coordinated by 11 European public clients, including the Italian Ministry of the Interior, and 47 end users who will judge the operational effectiveness of the proposed solutions. The Evaluation Commission includes the Carabinieri, the Fire Brigade, the Civil Protection and the Guardia di Finanza for Italy. Iscom which operates within the Ministry of Economic Development, will instead have the role of independent evaluator for the technical validity of the proposed solutions.
The Consortium led by Leonardo is developing an interoperable European mobile network solution for use by police forces and security operators, which allows broadband voice, data and video communications, with a high degree of security and reliability. The solution includes the new control room developed by Leonardo, which allows the integration,  the processing and the joint availability of multiple data sources. The Consortium will use satellite connections and 4G - future 5G mobile networks to ensure pan-European coverage of the service. The PPDR4Europe consortium includes Athonet, Bittium, Iscom, Lancaster University, Proef, Radiolabs, Telespazio Italy and France, Ubiwhere, University of Bologna and Vodafone Portugal.
BroadWay is part of a broader design: the public buyers who manage the project aim to create a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) for the management of broadband networks in the public safety sector.

This Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 786912.