Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 1, May 2010
Future-proofing European ATM
By Pierre Hanoune
Head of PENS Management Unit (PMU)
EUROCONTROL
PENS is a joint EUROCONTROL/ANSP-led initiative which aims to provide a common IP-based network service across the European region covering voice and data communication. It was launched jointly by EUROCONTROL, SITA, AENA (Spain), NAVIAIR (Denmark) and LFV (Sweden) on 28 October 2009. Since February 28th, 2010, The PENS Users now include NATS (UK), FINAVIA (Finland), AVINOR (Norway), the RAPNET community (DFS for Germany, BELGOCONTROL for Belgium and LVNL for The Netherlands), ENAV (Italy), CROCONTROL (Croatia), SLOVENIACONTROL (Slovenia), LPS (Slovakia), HUNGAROCONTROL (Hungary) and NAV Portugal (Portugal).
Delivered by SITA, it will meet the current and future needs for inter-ANSP information exchange. In particular, it will help those ANSPs still using the X25 Protocol to migrate to an IP service in a cost-efficient and manageable way in order to comply with the Single European Sky Regulation.
Our plan is to achieve substantial economies of scale by making PENS a shared infrastructure. It will replace the individual IP network services of the EUROCONTROL's Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU) and the European Aeronautical Information Services Database (EAD). PENS users located at the same site, regardless of which organization they belong to will be able to share the infrastructure in a secure way, thus optimising the number of lines and the cost.
Today, those users can come from any ANSP of a EUROCONTROL member state, as well as us at EUROCONTROL. But the ambition is for PENS to become the communication backbone for the whole ATM community in Europe, paving the way for similar initiatives to be launched in other regions as well.
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