GOVSATCOM – GEXTRECS

Governmental Satellite Communications (GOVSATCOM) is a component of the European Union Space Programme,introduced to ensure the long-term availability of reliable, secure and cost-effective satellite communication (SATCOM) services for governmental users from EU Member States and for EU institutions. More specifically, GOVSATCOM services support communications in security- and safety-critical missions and operations, including crisis management, land and border surveillance, and the protection of key infrastructures.

The underlying premise of the GOVSATCOM initiative is pooling and sharing, which consists in pooling available capacity of governmental and commercial satellite communication providers, and sharing that capacity with authorised governmental users. This will be accomplished through the EU-owned GOVSATCOM Hub, which will connect users with GOVSATCOM service providers. Read more

GOVSATCOM use cases

Crisis management: e.g., emergency response following natural and man-made disasters, humanitarian crises, maritime emergency, law enforcement interventions, EU External Action missions, etc.
Surveillance: e.g., border surveillance, maritime surveillance and control, surveillance of illegal trafficking, etc.
Key infrastructures: e.g., transport infrastructures, space infrastructures, institutional communications, energy grids, financial infrastructures, ICT infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure, etc.
Specific use cases: communications in Polar regions, aerial SATCOM (UAV/RPAS), Machine to Machine & Internet of Things communications.

End-to-end services – allowing the user to connect to a network capable to provide services;
Anchored capacity services – allowing the user to use satellite capacity and associated anchoring station facility (to integrate SATCOM access with terrestrial networks); and
Raw capacity services – allowing the user to use satellite capacity (i.e., bandwidth).