Erillisverkot Group Pleased with RFI Answers for Virve 2.0 Mission Critical Services
Erillisverkot, offering secure and reliable ICT services for public authorities and other critical operators of national security in Finland, published a RFI on Virve 2.0 mission critical services in November 2019.
The primary goal was to get a good picture of the maturity and interoperability of these solutions to guide in shaping the related procurement strategy. Altogether 30 responses were received by the deadline.
“We were really pleased to receive so many good responses and in the content of both those and the follow-up discussions we had with some of the companies. We are grateful for all the information received. Without this information, planning for the forthcoming procurement phase would have been much more demanding and risking getting our requirements wrong in some places.”, says Development Manager Ari Toivonen.
Erillisverkot received feedback on the topics covered by the RFI from various interested parties from all over the world and from many sides of the industry including suppliers, consultants and other public safety operators. Several of the responses focused on only some areas of the RFI based on their own interests and capabilities.
“We assume that the summary document provides a pretty accurate picture of the current situation and near future plans of the 3GPP-based mission critical services industry at the moment. However, we expect to see fast evolution in this market and anyone conducting a similar exercise in the future is likely to receive different results”, concludes Ari Toivonen.
The RFI was to inform the second phase of the Virve 2.0 project that will specify, procure and roll out the Virve 2.0 mission critical services. The procurement activities are expected to start in 2020. Earlier in April, Erillisverkot announced that they had chosen to acquire the broadband Virve 2.0 radio access network as a service from Elisa and the core systems from Ericsson.
