Airbus-Capgemini consortium chosen for France public-safety-broadband system

The French Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories has selected the consortium led by Airbus and Capgemini to play the key integrator role in the Réseau Radio du Futur (RRF, or Radio Network of the Future) that is designed to provide public-safety broadband services throughout France.

When completed, the RRF is expected to provide secure, prioritized 4G and 5G connectivity to support the modern communications needs—notably, in terms of data and video—of France’s security and emergency actors, according to the French ministry.

“Today, police officers, gendarmes, firefighters, SAMU doctors use radio equipment designed in the early 1990s, specific to each force, and which does not allow the transmission of large quantities of data or data. real-time images from the field,” according to a statement on the French ministry’s website.

“With the RRF, France will acquire a very high-speed communication network (4G then 5G) common to all security and rescue actors, allowing them to communicate instantly with each other while benefiting from new features: video calls, live position sharing, sending electrocardiograms, etc. The RRF takes into account all the users participating in the security and emergency continuum and makes it possible to connect the agents in the field to the command rooms.”

At the PSCR 2022 event in June, Guillaume Lambert—senior executive of the French Ministry of the Interior—described the RRF initiative and noted that initial construction of the network would focus on locations within France that are scheduled to host events during the Summer Olympics in late July and August 2024. The statement on the French ministry website reflects a similar timeline, without mentioning the Olympics.

This statement on the French ministry website notes that the country is investing more than 700 million euros (more than $684 million) into the RRF overall.

A joint press release issued today by Airbus and Capgemini states that the companies were selected “for the role of Package 2 integrator” for the RRF, as well as providing some additional detail about their expected tasks.

“In the context of RRF, Airbus will … provide a solution that will allow its various stakeholders to communicate via this new network, with support from a variety of partners, including Econocom, Prescom, Samsung and Streamwide,” according to the press release.

“For its part, Capgemini will integrate the many sets of expertise provided by all the project partners. This includes Dell Technologies for the cloud infrastructure it will provide in support Ericsson’s 5G telecommunications services.”

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury thanked the French Ministry of the Interior for the trust it has placed in his company and pledged its commitment to the RRF public-safety broadband initiative.

“All our teams have been mobilized to provide a secure and sovereign solution to carry out missions of the utmost criticality in the service of French citizens,” Faury said in a prepared statement. “This project, which for Airbus is in line with other major secure communication programs carried out by our Group, demonstrates the importance of modernizing these critical systems, at a national and European level.“

Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat echoed this sentiment.

“We are proud to become a trusted partner of the French government for this major project,” Ezzat said in a prepared statement. “RRF will be a crucial transition for the operational efficiency of the security forces and future uses of digital technology. It is a matter of national sovereignty and the starting point for a European sector of excellence.

“Capgemini is a key player for a critical project of this size and complexity, given its experience, industrial capacity and unparalleled expertise in the field of secure networks, telecommunication and 5G.”

By selecting Airbus and Streamwide, the French ministry has selected a vendor combination that has been subjected to extensive operability and interoperability testing during the pan-European BroadWay project that was completed at the end of September.

Ken Rehbehn, principal analyst at CritComm Insights, noted the significance of the RRF award.

“The eagerly awaited Lot 2 contract award for France’s Réseau Radio du Futur (RRF) is important, because it marks a transition from procurement to deployment for one of the most significant national mission-critical LTE projects around the globe,” Rehbehn said in a prepared statement provided to IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It also serves as the first large-scale nationwide mission-critical push-to-talk contract win for Airbus and its partner, Streamwide.”