French Fire and Rescue Service Tests RV1 Vehicular Relay During Tour de France

Tour de France 2026: Hautes-Pyrénées Fire and Rescue Service Tests the RV1 Vehicular Relay for the Réseau Radio du Futur.

As part of the rollout of the Réseau Radio du Futur (RRF) in the Hautes-Pyrénées department (65), the Service départemental d'incendie et de secours (SDIS 65) conducted trials of the Relais Véhiculaire 1 (RV1), made available to carry out radio coverage tests during two stages of the Tour de France, including a finish at the Cirque de Gavarnie — an environment with limited network coverage.

A solution for maintaining critical communications in mountainous terrain

These trials aimed to assess the RV1's performance under real-world conditions, complementing the Airbus ANTARES Tetrapol network (used in particular by firefighters and the SAMU emergency medical service), with the goal of optimizing communications continuity in an area where terrain can complicate radio coverage.

The trial also tested a configuration coupling the RV1 with a Eutelsat satellite antenna. The objective was to validate a resilient communications architecture between SDIS 65, the Hautes-Pyrénées prefecture, and ACMOSS, capable of maintaining operational exchanges even in the most constrained sectors.

What is the RV1?

Designed as a connectivity bubble to ensure the continuity of critical communications in the field, the Relais Véhiculaire 1 (RV1) creates a secure Wi-Fi bubble of up to 150 metres around the response vehicle, allowing RRF smartphones to retain access to critical services. Easy to deploy, it operates on the move and provides high-speed connectivity in rural and mountainous areas, underground, or inside buildings — locations where mobile coverage can become insufficient.

Interoperable and fully "plug and play," the RV1 allows RRF users, regardless of which agency they belong to, to connect automatically to the relay without any specific configuration. This ease of use makes it a tool particularly well suited to multi-agency operations and large-scale events. The trials recently carried out by ACMOSS also demonstrated its ability to be coupled with a satellite link to maintain communications even in coverage gaps ("white zones").

A new milestone in the RRF rollout in the Hautes-Pyrénées

This trial builds on the launch meeting for the Réseau Radio du Futur held at the Hautes-Pyrénées prefecture last spring. On that occasion, security and emergency response stakeholders in the department identified communications resilience in difficult terrain as one of the major challenges of the RRF rollout.

The trials conducted during the Tour de France thus provided an opportunity to test ACMOSS's additional coverage solutions against real-world field conditions and to prepare future operational uses of the network for the benefit of all security and emergency response services.
Deployable Base Stations (SBD) or Rapid Response Solutions (SRR) — discover the other additional coverage solutions offered by the RRF.