The Swedish company Ericsson has centred its cyber security operations on the area of Jorvas in Kirkkonummi, Finland. Ericsson’s experts are also responsible for the reliability and security of the new Virve 2.0 broadband public safety network.
Erillisverkot will acquire the broadband Virve 2.0 radio access network as a service from Elisa and the core systems from Ericsson. With this procurement, Erillisverkot will ensure the continuity of critical communications and operational capability of public safety in all situations in the future.
Erillisverkot updated its strategy in 2023. The updated strategy was published for the personnel in October and for customers and stakeholders in December. We wanted to analyse the strategy more thoroughly because of the major changes in the operating environment. The changing security context, more stringent economic development and accelerating technological development were important background factors. Finland’s membership in NATO also impacted the company’s willingness to update the strategy.
The new broadband Virve service for public safety operators is being built carefully and in stages. “We have made excellent progress, as a large part of the work has already been done. The situation could be compared to a building that already has foundations, walls and a roof – at this stage it already looks like a house,” says Ari Toivonen, Development Manager at Erillisverkot.
Finnish authorities’ communications will gradually move towards the broadband and mobile era in the 2020s. The next generation broadband Virve service is an entity coming together like a jigsaw puzzle in collaboration with its users. How is the project coming along?
An important milestone was reached in the Virve 2.0 project on February 18th, 2021. This is when it became possible to test the connection between the core systems provided by Ericsson, and the radio access network provided by Elisa.
The second procurement phase of the public safety network Virve's renewal started in early October, in which Erillisverkot will purchase mission critical services for the Virve 2.0 system. “Mission critical services is an entity that consists of server software running in the equipment rooms of Erillisverkot Group, applications installed on users' mobile and fixed devices and management applications related to these services," says Ari Toivonen, Development Manager of Erillisverkot Group.
The new broadband public safety network, Virve 2.0, will be available to mission critical operators in 2023. Reetta Siltasalmi-Kautto, our Service Designer and Harri Virtanen, Head of Department of Customer Relationships explain how the development is carried out in cooperation with our customers.
New opportunities open for safety operators as the Virve 2.0 public safety network begins using Elisa’s broadband 4G and 5G mobile networks. Future applications that can help rescue services and actors critical for the security of supply in the field include remote-controlled tractors used in clearing work and real-time video transmitted by drones. The first testers will begin using Virve 2.0 at the end of 2021.
The development work concerning the broadband public safety network Virve 2.0, which is led by Erillisverkot Group is one of the most important governmental ICT project in the near future. Virve 2.0 is also a major leap at the international scale, since it makes mobile broadband services available for authorities in cooperation with the newly selected commercial partners.
