Cops hand Motorola £25M no-bid deal to keep 2000-era radios alive

Contract extension keeps Airwave ticking

UK police technology buyers have quietly extended life support for the country’s ageing Airwave radios, awarding a roughly £25 million, six-month no-competition contract to keep Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) handsets, software, accessories, services and maintenance running. The Police Digital Service said the short extension — split between Motorola and Sepura and running from the start of next year — is intended to ensure ambulance, fire and police services "can remain fully operational." The notice bypassed a competitive tender; the original framework began in January 2023 and was valued at about £50 million for four years.

Why it matters — and why it stings

The patch is hardly cosmetic. The government began planning an Airwave/TETRA replacement back in 2012, aiming for a 4G-based Emergency Services Network (ESN) by 2017. It has been reported that the ESN is now 12 years late and some £3 billion over budget, with a live date pushed into 2029. Supporting Airwave while attempting to build ESN has cost billions — the National Audit Office puts the combined bill at about £11 billion over ten years — and Motorola’s dual role in the legacy and successor programmes drew Competition and Markets Authority scrutiny. Motorola ultimately walked away from a roughly £400 million ESN contract amid those tensions, a development that left officials scrambling. How did a public-safety upgrade become a decade-long saga? Long delays, vendor churn and contingency after contingency will do it.

Short-term fix, long-term headache

Officials argue onboarding any new supplier or creating a fresh accreditation pathway would likely take longer than the current ESN timetable, so the six-month extension is framed as pragmatic rather than profligate. A Crown Commercial Service framework for buying network services — including TETRA — is due in February next year, and the Police Digital Service says it's built contingency for further slippage. Still, critics will see this as more sticking plaster on tech from the early Noughties — familiar, reliable, but increasingly obsolete — while the broadband future keeps getting pushed further down the road. When public-safety comms depend on decade-old kit, the stakes aren’t theoretical. Why are we still papering over it?

Sources: The Register