Orange Business was selected to provide the private communications backbone for public administrations across Europe.

The firm was chosen as network partner for the Trans-European Services for Telematics between Administrations Enhanced Infrastructure for Reliable Interconnectivity and Security (TESTA-EIRIS) platform, a private communications network run by the European Commission. The service provides pan-European interconnection between European Union (EU) member states, the U.K., and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) nations candidate countries.

The platform is designed by the Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT) for secure data exchange between public bodies. Orange will work with DG DIGIT to provide the layer-two (L2) and layer-three (L3) backbone behind the infrastructure, combined with cloud connectivity and virtual private networks to securely connect distributed sites.

The venture will align at least 12 points of presence across five strategic European regions, with the aim of delivering four-nines uptime and resilient connectivity across sites and multicloud infrastructures.

Orange also noted its AI-powered Evolution Platform would replace dedicated hardware with software-defined services.

Richard van Wageningen, president of Europe for Orange Business, commented in an announcement that “as reliance on digital technologies increases and cyber threats continue to evolve, the EU has placed digital trust at the heart of its strategic priorities. Core to the TESTA-EIRIS backbone project is the drive to build a secure, trusted European digital ecosystem. Orange Business is proud to be chosen to deliver this robust, adaptable, and future-proof infrastructure to support the EU's critical needs.”

With the new contract, Orange builds on its already considerable sovereignty proposition for Europe. The firm arguably fired the starting pistol in the sovereignty space with Bleu, the platform it formed in 2024 with French system integrator Capgemini, which provides a Microsoft Azure-based sovereign cloud within France.

Orange also caters to the EFTA space, with Nordic firms such as Finnish IT player Tieto opting for Cloud Avenue, Orange's sovereign cloud offering for the European market. That agreement covers the entire Tieto group as it expands across the Nordics and Europe.