Ambition of the Polish scientific community was to build a modern IT infrastructure for science in Poland. Involvement of representatives of science and numerous environmental discussions led to the creation and adoption by the Scientific Research Committee (KBN) of the “PIONIER: Polish Optical Internet – Advanced Applications, Services and Technologies for the Information Society” program as the official project for the development of the IT infrastructure of science in Poland. As part of this program, in 2001 started the construction of the national PIONIER fiber optic backbone network, connecting the Municipal Computer Networks and High Power Computing Centers.

In order to implement tasks entrusted to scientific community by the KBN, in April 2001 the “Agreement on the construction and operation of the National Optical Network of PIONIER scientific and academic units” was signed, and then, in July of the same year was sign the “Agreement on the establishment of a Consortium for the operation and operation of use of the Polish Optical Network of scientific and academic units PIONIER ”. Task of building PIONIER network was entrusted to the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC), which became the operator of this network.

As a result of the above actions, the Leading Units MAN and KDM, which are signatories of the above-mentioned agreements, after commissioning the first part of the network, on November 25, 2003 in Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula river, signed an agreement on the basis of which the PIONIER Consortium was established, whose main tasks were operation, maintenance and management of PIONIER network.

On the basis of this agreement PIONIER Consortium Council was appointed, the work of which is managed by the Presidium of the Council: the Chairman, two Vice-Presidents and the Secretary. The Presidium is elected for a two-year term.