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.
The legendary Michèle Mouton, a former rally driver, participated in Rally Finland in Jyväskylä as a member of the FIA safety delegation. She praises Virve, the Finnish authorities’ public safety network, emphasising the importance of radio communications in ensuring the overall safety of rallies.
Being able to offer suitable mobile devices to Er-illisverkot and its public safety users is a crucial part of the Virve 2.0 development project in Finland. To learn more about the device suppliers’ current offerings and near time plans Erillisverkot published a Request for Information (RFI) in September.
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.
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.