GÉANT and EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, are proud to announce the signature of a five-year agreement, advancing their long-standing collaboration on network and connectivity services to support the global distribution of meteorological satellite data that is essential for weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and environmental research.
The new framework will allow GÉANT and several NRENs to deliver – in collaboration with Regional Research and Education Networks (RRENs) and NRENs beyond Europe – a multi-country and multi-NREN service coordinated by GÉANT, providing EUMETSAT with a Single Point of Contact for planning, operations, maintenance, monitoring, reporting, and contracts.
The framework also includes the renewal and upgrade of the EUMETCast Terrestrial distribution service, provided by GÉANT in collaboration with multiple NRENs, the renewal of connectivity services and SPOC implementation for multiple EUMETSAT sites, and the introduction of new management services. Additionally, the overarching Master Framework Agreement between GÉANT and EUMETSAT has been renewed and updated, complementing the existing contracts, adding new reference legislation, and refreshing and harmonising the general terms and conditions.
“I am proud of GÉANT’s and EUMETSAT’s strong partnership as we are taking our long-standing collaboration a step forward with the recent agreement. The new SPOC model reflects how GÉANT and its member NRENs are evolving to meet the needs of complex, intergovernmental organisations like EUMETSAT. This coordinated approach will be increasingly important going forward by enabling the cross-border distribution of European satellite data and thus supporting weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and environmental research.” – Lise Fuhr, GÉANT CEO
“We are pleased to continue our long-standing collaboration with GÉANT and the participating NRENs through this renewed agreement. The combination of highly reliable connectivity services, the upgrade of EUMETCast Terrestrial and the introduction of a coordinated Single Point of Contact approach will support the continued evolution of EUMETSAT’s global data distribution services and our mission to deliver critical meteorological and climate data to users worldwide.” – Graziano Mori, EUMETSAT’s Director of Technical and Scientific Support
Terrestrial connectivity for Europe’s meteorological satellites
EUMETSAT operates Europe’s meteorological satellites systems, providing observations of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land surfaces – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These observations are essential for weather forecasting, climate monitoring and environmental research.
EUMETSAT’s satellite data and products are then delivered in Near Real-Time (NRT) to meteorological agencies and scientific institutions across the globe. This is done primarily via EUMETSAT’s broadcast service EUMETCast, consisting of two complementary delivery systems: EUMETCast Satellite and EUMETCast Terrestrial. Since 2014, GÉANT and its NREN partners have supported EUMETSAT by providing EUMETCast’s Terrestrial component, which enables the dissemination of EUMETSAT data through the GÉANT network and through research and education networks worldwide using multicast.
The new contracts renew the agreement under which GÉANT and participating NRENs will continue to provide the EUMETCast Terrestrial services for the next five years and will enable further evolution of the EUMETCast services, and in particular its AMT (Automatic Multicast Tunnelling) component.
Introducing a new “Single Point of Contact” model and approach
Intergovernmental organisations with a global service footprint, such as EUMETSAT, have complex and demanding requirements. While its headquarters are in Darmstadt in Germany, EUMETSAT operates all over the world, across multiple countries, with different contracts and legislation. They also need to get a consistent view of their full network infrastructure, while at the same time avoiding single points of failure. Meeting these operational demands is a challenge that cannot be easily tackled through multiple contracts with a variety of commercial providers, or through one single NREN, but that instead requires close, targeted coordination across multiple networks involved in the provision of multi-domain services.
Over the past few years, GÉANT, together with member NRENs and partner RENs, and EUMETSAT have been progressively exploring and developing a joint approach to tackle this challenge. From the signature of the first framework in 2020, through joint service deployment in Norway and in Spain in 2021, to last year’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between GÉANT, RedIRIS, Sikt, NORDUnet, DFN, GARR, and GRNET, this approach has been evolving into a full SPOC service, now made possible through the recent agreement.
Within the SPOC approach, GÉANT acts as coordinator and Single Point of Contact, in collaboration with the NRENs involved, ensuring the high-level of reliable service required by EUMETSAT. The SPOC service consists of five key areas:
- GÉANT as Single Point of Contact for operations – including maintenance notifications and relationship management
- Monitoring and reporting to EUMETSAT on the provided services
- GÉANT as Single point of contract (where applicable and upon NREN consent)
- Service Level Specifications with the highest quality parameters possible
- GÉANT as Single point of NREN coordination – including proactive response to service incident, relationship management, planning of new services, in coordination with NRENs
The new agreements also include the renewal of service contracts for end-site connectivity and SPOC implementation for four initial sites: to the EUMETSAT Headquarters in Darmstadt in collaboration with DFN, to Madrid (BUCC service) in collaboration with RedIRIS, to North America (JEUNO service) in collaboration with Internet2, and to Svalbard in collaboration with NORDUnet and Sikt. Moreover, GÉANT will also procure monitoring and reporting equipment to be deployed in the Darmstadt and Madrid sites and will continue the ongoing work to expand the service to additional locations, in collaboration with the relevant NRENs.
As a part of the set of network services, a baseline Mandatory Management Service (MMS) was introduced to enable the SPOC provision, through related contracts for EU-based services and one for North America. An Operational Communication Flow through the GÉANT Operations Centre is also implemented for operational requests, incident management and maintenance, mapping services across domains, and identifying clear escalation points.
A model for future collaboration
The agreements with EUMETSAT constitute a new model and a practical example for how the GÉANT community can respond to the operational needs of transnational and intergovernmental organisations. Based on this experience, GÉANT and the NRENs may be able to increasingly build the capabilities and processes needed to extend this model to other mission-critical infrastructures in need of cross-border connectivity.
About EUMETSAT
Since 1986, EUMETSAT, Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, has monitored weather and climate from space. From its headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, it operates fleets of satellites observing the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land, delivering real-time, 24/7 data and imagery to its 30 member states to help protect communities and support critical sectors of their economies.
Marking its 40th anniversary in 2026, EUMETSAT can look back on four decades of European cooperation in space-based monitoring and a proven record of delivering trusted data for forecasts, early warnings and climate services worldwide.
About GÉANT
GÉANT is Europe’s leading collaboration on network and related infrastructure and services for the benefit of research and education, contributing to Europe’s economic growth and competitiveness. The organisation develops, delivers and promotes advanced network and associated e-infrastructure services, and supports innovation and knowledge-sharing amongst its members, partners and the wider research and education networking community. For more information, visit www.geant.org
