Astrium Services to supply PASSEREL communications services to France’s troops

* Four year contract to service all major French bases overseas

Astrium Services has been selected by France’s “Economat des Armées” (French MoD’s Joint Logistics and Supply Agency) to deliver PASSEREL end-to-end communications services to France’s troops deployed overseas, primarily in the Balkans, Africa, and Middle-East.

The comprehensive PASSEREL contract includes providing voice and internet services for more than 10,000 service personnel stationed around the world. PASSEREL services enable troops to stay in touch with family and friends by telephone, email and via the Internet.

As well as providing fixed telephone points in “call shops” and Internet cafés, PASSEREL services will also provide an innovative wireless network for individual telephone and laptop users. The wireless service will cover recreational areas including canteens and sleeping quarters, barracks of national and multinational compounds allowing troops to make and receive calls, surf the web and email, with unequalled flexibility, comfort and mobility.

The service will enable French and co-located troops from other nations to make wireless telephone calls to each other on the base free of charge, as well as telephoning and receiving calls from friends and family back in France and around the world. Wireless telephones, available for troops to buy as part of the service offered by Astrium Services, will be able to receive calls - meaning that friends and family can direct-dial service personnel on camps at any time.

Troops will be able to buy various types of prepaid cards for phone time or web-browsing from Economat des Armées outlets or from the secure PASSEREL Intranet for account management or top-ups, to get access to services provided by Astrium Services.

All telephone and internet services are secure and are switched around the world using satellite communications provided by Astrium Services to meet the expectations of both individuals and the military establishment.

Eric Béranger, CEO of Astrium Services, said: “This new generation of individual services is a major improvement for the military in operations worldwide. These services are an important part of our end-to-end PASSEREL services portfolio, which are truly flexible and tailored to meet different national requirements.”

The PASSEREL contract awarded to Astrium Services for four years for the provision of private communications services to the Economat des Armées as needed around the world, benefits from the experience gained with the UK Welfare services contract provided by Paradigm. Part of Astrium Services, Paradigm has been responsible for the provision of WelComE (Welfare Communications Everywhere) services to the UK Armed Forces since September 1999, and has provided over a million hours of welfare telephone calls, since Op Telic began.