Madrid, May 16h 2024 – Airbus has collaborated alongside the Spanish Ministry of the Interior and Telefónica to evolve the current SIRDEE emergency Network (SIRDEE - State Digital Radio Communications Emergency) towards a comprehensive broadband service by adding broadband capabilities alongside existing narrowband features.  This project represents a pivotal advancement in guaranteeing the availability and reliability of critical services, focusing on the operational benefits that the broadband ecosystem can bring to the end-users.

"With the SIRDEE broadband evolution, the Spanish Ministry of Interior will lead the Spanish end users to the technological vanguard, increasing exponentially the network capabilities and use cases implementation", said Jose Antonio Cebrián, Head of the Program Office at the Ministry of Interior. 

Juan Carlos Hernández, Managing Director Spain & Portugal for Airbus Public Safety and Security business unit said: “By bringing our integration capabilities and expertise in the mission-critical ecosystem, Airbus  is proud to contribute to this innovative service supporting the Spanish Ministry of Interior in their evolution towards broadband”.

Javier Toribio, Head of the Mission Critical business unit at Telefónica states: “After 24 years of successful SIRDEE service, Telefónica, together with our partner Airbus, is proud to help the Spanish Ministry of Interior and all national security forces to reach the next level, thanks to a comprehensive broadband emergency service that is becoming a world reference in terms of service capabilities and reliability". 

Today SIRDEE serves over 150,000 users in Spain, including National Police, Guardia Civil, the Royal House, Prime Minister's Cabinet, Traffic Police, Military Emergency Unit (UME), Spanish Navy, and various defence, regional, and local organizations. It covers approximately 700,000 km2, including the Canary and Balearic Islands and coastal areas. 

The current SIRDEE network is a worldwide acknowledged successful and bullet-proof service and so it aims to be a world reference in the evolution towards broadband. However, the shortage of broadband radio frequency spectrum allocation has been a complete challenge. In response, Telefónica in collaboration with Airbus has overcome this issue by improving coverage and capacity, advancing technology development and new applications, and enhancing interoperability at both operational and technical levels. This broadband SIRDEE service is at the forefront of implementing Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) technology in an operational environment to maximize the efficient usage of radio resources. Telefónica and Airbus successfully integrated eMBMS by adjusting all the building blocks of the solution, including Core, RAN, UE, and MCX. 

Following the required field-testing phase, operational deployment has commenced in Alicante and Albacete. 

 

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Marina Mittermaier

Airbus Defence and Space