Airwave a 'license to print money' on legacy blue-light comms contract

British emergency services comms supplier Airwave has posted increased earnings and profits after it challenged authorities seeking to cap its prices. The Motorola-owned business is at the center of controversy in the UK after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) estimated it could make nearly £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion …

[Anonymous Coward]

Legacy is the new work for working...

Get the ESN built for *data*, supply vehicles with high speed data.

Then add on personal data, on commodity hardware, as an "extra" - alongside the tetra radio for actual reliable and versatile comms.

Then look at whether someone can make something that is appropriately robust to offer an alternative for the vox radio.

And continue to look at upgrading the robustness of the data terminals as needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Legacy is the new work for working...

All of that could be done but surly the lessons here are:

1. Don't get locked in with a supplier.

2. Don't then sign a contract to replace the locked in system with a new one which also involves the supplier you claim to be unhappy with.

3. Don't faf around with changing and poorly thought out requirements until you're years late and over budget. We're not the only country in the world with emergency services so do what the others are doing where it works, it keeps costs down and makes implementation simpler and faster.

4. When you've made a big effort to screw up all of the points above don't come crying and pointing at the supplier, it's your fault you idiots!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Legacy is the new work for working...

1 - Wouldn't be an issue if we hadn't created it as a PPP rather than the national infrastructure it is.

3 - That's the biggest screwup, though avoiding also means spending inordinate sums on "up front consultation"

The biggest thing here is that there was always a clear way to phase the ESN, such that it would be of benefit at each stage.

[Peter2]

Re: Legacy is the new work for working...

The thing is, if you split this up into manageable chunks then the job is actually quite easy to deliver.

If you just want encrypted data to mobile vehicles then there is a range of solutions. From 3G etc, plus a VPN to secure the traffic to Starlink etc if really required for data to the vehicle.

The UK has 142145 full time equivalent police. Assuming that each one has their own personal police car (unlikely, but for sake of argument...) then at £450 full retail price for a starlink terminal it'd cost £64 million quid to buy every single one a starlink terminal for their vehicle, and you'd assume that you could get a bulk discount with that sort of volume. Add a toughbook at £3k each and that's another £426 million, which delivers a working system now at rather less than half a billion, which is £1.5 billion cheaper than the last failed effort.

In addition, having watched a few minutes of varying police reality shows in the UK it looks very much like individual forces have got fed up of waiting and have just put their own data systems in place, so presumably the problem is that the national system is competing with the individual forces efforts at providing their officers with the tools to do their jobs.

If that is the case, then just stop trying and leave them to it because they are obviously doing a better job than the national programme.

[MatthewSt]

Re: Legacy is the new work for working...

Depends on your definition of working really. You've spent 25% of the existing project, assumed that you don't need to pay the £10m per month subscription fee, and you've solved the problem for stationary officers that are in their cars and have line of sight to the sky.

If we're talking about only solving part of the problem then equip them all with dual SIM phones that the car kit hot spots off. 2x unlimited SIMs on different networks.

Significantly cheaper and technically more reliable and useful than Starlink. Not to mention not having to deal with a CEO who has a history of disconnecting people he doesn't agree with.

Both of these plans fall down in actual emergencies though

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

They get you with the free iPhone

Then add it to the monthly bill for ever

[ecofeco]

I never get tired of saying it

Come on, you all should know this by now:

So how's that cloud thing working for ya?

[Knightlie]

"license to print money,"

ALL Government contracts - whether central or local - are a license to print money, always have been, always will be. £11 million? That's rookie numbers.

[Graham Cobb]

Why, oh why?

Just tell me, why can't we get competent public service managers, who can properly budget, deal with contingency, manage contractors, and deliver!

HS2, Airwave, Birmingham, ... I know these projects are hard but why can't we get the best people on the biggest national projects? Of course there will be issues and overruns - that is what risk management and contingency is for!

I know politicians always want to do the biggest thing, for the lowest budget, and reward their "friends" but can't we have a national Project Management competency to tell them to just STFU and let the professionals deliver it?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Why, oh why?

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to fullfill the ministerial vision form MEGAPROJECT

And make sure the minister appears in lots of positive press releases

Then when the minister gets promoted / fired / resigns after the incident with the Girl-Guide / Labrador / KGB agent / Inflatable sheep - fullfill the ministerial vision for the next minister,

Repeat every 3 months

[anothercynic]

Re: Why, oh why?

Because that's not how government works. There are many civil servants who are just as frustrated with the constant mess as you or I or any other member of the public is.

Ministers want to show they did something (like Grant Shapps insisting that his name be put on what was Keith Williams' work, i.e. the Williams review of the railway industry and strategy as it stands). They want to implement whatever warped vision their party has of what the world should be like. And when they get their mitts on what they really want to mess with, God help the civil servants, because they're tasked to implement what the minister wants, regardless of whether they think it's the worst idea ever or not.

The permanent secretaries (i.e. heads of department) are there to advise the minister of the sense (or foolishness) of their ideas. That's why you've seen several of them depart (because either they were fed up with being spoken to like children, or felt that they were actively being sidelined) during the current party's rule. These people are there to keep order and avoid chopping and changing things at the whim of some minister who has absolutely *zero* clue about what their brief is, what it entails, and what they're meant to do.

Unfortunately, they also view people who come from the commercial world with a bit of a suspicious eye ("what are you doing here, and what's your ulterior motive"), which is both wise and a shame because while there *are* people who go in to see how much they can score for their friends in the commercial world (these tend to be the ones 'suggested' by the ministers or secretaries of state, or their minions), there are also a lot of people who believe that the department/ministry is getting well and truly shafted and needs help fending off the former. The sad thing is that the latter are in the distinct minority, and they tend to come up against consultancies who like to charge lots of money.

The end result: Chaos and what you could consider mismanagement.