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| Participants at the NewPENS meeting. Photo: Eurocontrol |
[Avionics Today 01-19-2016] Eurocontrol is moving forward with its implementation of NewPENS, which will build on the success of the current Pan-European Network Services (PENS) infrastructure and aims to become the means of ground-to-ground communication for all connections between all Air Traffic Management (ATM) stakeholders across Europe. As of Jan. 14, 41 Eurocontrol member states have decided to entrust Eurocontrol with a Common Procurement Agreement (CPA) — 34 organizations, both civil and military, have signed the agreement and are now part of the NewPENS project.
“NewPENS enables System Wide Information Management (SWIM) data exchange across the whole of Europe as ATM will become much more data-driven in the future,” said Frank Brenner, director general of Eurocontrol. “NewPENS will carry data from the Network Manager, the Eurocontrol Centralized Services and from the air navigation service providers.”
The current PENS contract will come to an end in 2018. The new governance structure will therefore be focusing on ensuring that the timeline for having a new contract in place can be followed. The call for tenders will be published in the first semester of 2016, with offers expected in December. Eurocontrol’s aim is to have the contract in place by the end of 2017 so the migration to the new provider can start by the middle of 2018.