Finland's national critical communications operator for public safety broadband, PPDR networks, and 5G emergency services infrastructure.
Suomen Erillisverkot Oy — "Finnish Dedicated Networks" — operates Finland's national critical communications infrastructure, providing secure and resilient networks for public safety agencies, government bodies, and emergency services. In H2020, they participated in Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) projects, acting as a demand-side end-user that defines operational requirements and validates technological solutions for public safety broadband networks. Their expertise centers on mission-critical communications: ensuring that police, fire brigades, and emergency responders have reliable, interoperable broadband connectivity across borders. As a national infrastructure operator rather than a research organization, they bring real-world deployment experience and regulatory knowledge that pure research or vendor partners cannot replicate.
Both BroadWay and BroadGNSS address Public Protection and Disaster Relief broadband, with keywords spanning public safety communication, PPDR, and mobile broadband across both projects.
5G appears as a keyword in both BroadWay (2018) and BroadGNSS (2020), indicating sustained engagement with next-generation radio technology for emergency services networks.
BroadWay explicitly targets a pan-European interoperable broadband mobile solution, reflecting Erillisverkot's interest in cross-border coordination for emergency communications.
BroadGNSS focuses on synchronisation and monitoring of critical communications systems using GNSS (satellite navigation), extending their scope into space-based timing infrastructure.
Their first project (BroadWay, 2018) was oriented around interoperability and network-level standards — the challenge of making public safety broadband work seamlessly across European borders, with a focus on mobile broadband and mission-critical reliability. By their second project (BroadGNSS, 2020), the framing shifted toward infrastructure precision: synchronisation, monitoring, and the role of GNSS satellite signals in keeping critical networks accurately timed and observable. The overall trajectory is one of deepening technical specialisation — from "can emergency services communicate across borders?" toward "can we keep the underlying infrastructure precisely synchronised and continuously monitored?"
They are moving from network interoperability standards into the precision infrastructure layer beneath those networks — timing, synchronisation, and monitoring — which positions them well for consortia building operational 5G PPDR systems that require satellite-grade timing accuracy.
Erillisverkot participates exclusively as a consortium partner and has never served as a project coordinator in H2020, which is typical of national infrastructure operators who join research consortia as demand-side validators rather than R&D leaders. Across just two projects they accumulated 18 distinct partners in 13 countries, indicating participation in large, pan-European consortia with broad multi-stakeholder membership. Working with them likely means they contribute operational requirements, test environments, and real-network validation rather than algorithm development or academic outputs.
With 18 unique consortium partners across 13 countries from only 2 projects, their network is disproportionately wide for their project count — averaging 9 partners per project and spanning more than half of EU member states. This breadth reflects the inherently pan-European nature of public safety communications interoperability, where national operators from multiple countries must coordinate.
As the Finnish national operator of dedicated critical communications networks, Erillisverkot occupies a narrow but highly credible position: they are an actual procurer and operator of public safety infrastructure, not a vendor or researcher. In PCP consortia, this means they define what "working" looks like for first responders — a role that academic institutions and technology companies cannot fill. For any consortium targeting PPDR, emergency services broadband, or 5G for public safety in Northern Europe, they are a high-value end-user partner who bridges regulatory mandate with operational reality.
