EU plans cross-border 5G and satellite network for emergency services

Filed 50m ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Medieval Loop One

Alexander Nakarada · creatorchords.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

The European Commission unveiled the EU Critical Communication System on Sept. 30, a plan to link national emergency networks so police, firefighters and medics can communicate across borders during fires, floods, terror attacks and drone incidents. Commissioner Magnus Brunner cited a wildfire on the Belgian-German border where crews lost contact the moment they crossed it, and a shooting in the Netherlands that a nearby Belgian emergency center 200 meters away couldn't even be alerted about.

The system would keep national networks under member states' own control while adding EU-level infrastructure to make them interoperable, plus a monitoring center for cybersecurity risks and satellite backup via the IRIS² program for blackouts or dead zones. A 2027 trial is planned, and firms including Airbus, Leonardo, Frequentis and Teltronic have already run feasibility tests.

The proposal is aimed at civilian responders but leaves the door open for member states to plug in their militaries and security services too, with officials framing the whole effort as part of reducing reliance on “high-risk suppliers.”

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

It took an actual fire crossing a line on a map, and crews losing each other mid-emergency, to get a continent of neighbors to admit their radios don't talk to each other. That's the kind of problem a small town would have fixed the first time two fire trucks showed up to the same barn and couldn't raise each other on the handset. Good that Brussels is finally wiring the phone line between the houses, odd that it took a burning nature reserve to notice the wire was never there.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Medieval Loop One · Alexander Nakarada · CC BY 4.0

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