Global Aviation, Government Bodies and Connectivity Leaders Unite to Shape the Future of Drone Airspace Safety   

The GSMA today announced the launch of a new indus­try-first call to action bring­ing togeth­er lead­ers from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, avi­a­tion, secu­ri­ty and drone oper­a­tions to help shape the future for safer drone air­spaces.   

The Joint Require­ments State­ment (JRS), devel­oped through the GSMA Fusion ini­tia­tive, sets out how mobile net­works and pro­gram­ma­ble net­work capa­bil­i­ties can sup­port the safe, trust­ed and scal­able drone oper­a­tions as the mar­ket grows, with elec­tron­ic con­spicu­ity play­ing a cen­tral role.   

Ini­tial con­trib­u­tors and sig­na­to­ries include the UK’s Nation­al Cyber Secu­ri­ty Cen­tre (NCSC), BCN Drone Cen­ter, Dime­tor, Eric­s­son, Invic­sa, NextNav, Nokia, Sha­bo­di and Viasat.  

Elec­tron­ic con­spicu­ity (EC) sig­nals the abil­i­ty for an air­craft or drone to be elec­tron­i­cal­ly vis­i­ble and iden­ti­fi­able to oth­er air­space users and author­i­ties. It enables the shar­ing of infor­ma­tion such as posi­tion, alti­tude, direc­tion, speed and iden­ti­ty in real time to improve sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness and safe­ty. 

The JRS doc­u­ment high­lights the grow­ing urgency for indus­try align­ment as gov­ern­ments, reg­u­la­tors and avi­a­tion author­i­ties world­wide accel­er­ate work on beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) drone oper­a­tions, drone first respon­der pro­grammes, autonomous avi­a­tion sys­tems and future pas­sen­ger car­ry­ing eVTOL air­craft.  

With­out ear­ly coor­di­na­tion, the group warns there is a sig­nif­i­cant risk that frag­ment­ed and nation­al­ly iso­lat­ed approach­es to drone con­spicu­ity, iden­ti­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty could become entrenched before glob­al­ly inter­op­er­a­ble frame­works are estab­lished.  

In the JRS, the organ­i­sa­tions out­line how mobile net­works can evolve beyond sim­ple con­nec­tiv­i­ty providers and play a strate­gic role in enabling trust­ed low alti­tude avi­a­tion through capa­bil­i­ties such as: 

·       Trust­ed iden­ti­ty and authen­ti­ca­tion   

·       Secure posi­tion­ing and geolo­ca­tion   

·       Real time teleme­try assur­ance   

·       Pri­ori­tised con­nec­tiv­i­ty for safe­ty crit­i­cal oper­a­tions   

·       Auditable net­work backed data streams   

·       Cross bor­der inter­op­er­abil­i­ty   

·       Scal­able sup­port for high den­si­ty drone oper­a­tions   

·       Resilient mul­ti-lay­er con­nec­tiv­i­ty through ter­res­tri­al and Non-Ter­res­tri­al Net­works (NTN), help­ing sup­port con­ti­nu­ity of oper­a­tions beyond tra­di­tion­al cov­er­age areas   

The group also out­line the role of pro­gram­ma­ble net­work capa­bil­i­ties and APIs, includ­ing GSMA Open Gate­way and CAMARA aligned frame­works, can play in help­ing sup­port future avi­a­tion safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy require­ments. They fur­ther high­light NTN as an increas­ing­ly impor­tant resilience lay­er for future drone oper­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly for remote, mar­itime, dis­as­ter recov­ery and nation­al secu­ri­ty relat­ed mis­sions where ter­res­tri­al cov­er­age alone may not always be suf­fi­cient. 

Bar­ney Stin­ton, Mar­ket Devel­op­ment Lead, Avi­a­tion at GSMA Fusion, said: “The drone mar­ket is scal­ing far faster than many of today’s air­space and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­works were orig­i­nal­ly designed for. This Joint Require­ments State­ment is an impor­tant sig­nal from indus­try that mobile net­works have a major role to play in sup­port­ing safe, trust­ed and inter­op­er­a­ble drone oper­a­tions at scale.  

“The objec­tive is not to replace exist­ing avi­a­tion sys­tems, but to bring togeth­er avi­a­tion, gov­ern­ment and tele­com indus­tries ear­ly enough to avoid frag­men­ta­tion and to help build glob­al­ly scal­able foun­da­tions before nation­al approach­es diverge too far.”  

The con­trib­u­tors believe the com­bi­na­tion of mobile con­nec­tiv­i­ty, net­work intel­li­gence, NTN evo­lu­tion and pro­gram­ma­ble APIs presents a major oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port the future evo­lu­tion of low alti­tude air­space man­age­ment, pub­lic safe­ty oper­a­tions, crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture inspec­tion and com­mer­cial drone ser­vices.  

The organ­i­sa­tions call for increased engage­ment between mobile net­work oper­a­tors, reg­u­la­tors, avi­a­tion stake­hold­ers and gov­ern­ments to ensure tele­com capa­bil­i­ties are con­sid­ered as part of future air­space and drone pol­i­cy devel­op­ment.  

Indus­try par­tic­i­pants involved in the ini­tia­tive are expect­ed to con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tion through­out 2026, includ­ing dis­cus­sions with addi­tion­al avi­a­tion stake­hold­ers, oper­a­tors, reg­u­la­tors and stan­dards bod­ies.  

The Joint Require­ments State­ment will be pre­sent­ed through ongo­ing GSMA Fusion indus­try engage­ment activ­i­ties and future avi­a­tion focused dis­cus­sions with oper­a­tors and ecosys­tem part­ners glob­al­ly.