back to article Motorola appeal over £200M price cap for Airwave service rejected

Motorola will not be allowed to again appeal a decision by the UK competition regulator to impose a price cap on the communications network it operates for Britain's emergency services. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) put forward proposals for a price ceiling in October 2022, given that Motorola provides the …

  1. Colintd

    Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

    The fundamental issues is that our political leaders and most of the civil service have no idea when it comes to technology and engineering, and a disdain for those who do. The results is that the decision makers on engineering projects lack the ability to separate truth from sales BS, or to negotiable deliverable specifications. At best they are misled, at worse, in their ignorance they push for things that are just not viable.

    With ESN, we have AirWave, as system incorporating from day-one specialist function (e.g. push-to-talk), using low frequencies to allow full coverage, and designed for very high availability, being "replaced" with a "service" built on top of a commercial phone system. The commercial system is designed to maximize profit from the infrastructure investment of mobile carriers, lacks push-to-talk (which is hard to retrofit), and uses high frequencies designed to maximize bandwidth at the expense of coverage.

    Throwing money at the problem, and sticking their head in the sand, will not fix these fundamental issues, yet no-one will admit it is doomed.

    1. Mentat74
      Coat

      Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

      Yup... but they do understand the concept of "brown envelopes"...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

      Where's the pressure to replace Airwave coming from? Presumably an element of it is emergency services leaders who think there's merit in higher bandwidth communication? What benefit (real or imagined) are emergency services leaders hoping to gain?

      And is this all part of some broader idiot policy that intends to seize the low frequency spectrum for garbage like DTTV or DAB?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

        The main issue is that as Tetra system, push to talk is pretty much the only thing Airwave is good at.

        If you want any appreciable amount of data you have to carry something else as well, or get a dual mode handset.

        Generally the "something else" is bog standard LTE, which doesn't have any of the prioritisation / preemption that the ESN version is supposed to bring.

        (A secondary issue is that Tetra is a niche technology, so the kit is really expensive. But by the time standard LTE kit has been bought through a government contract, I expect it will be a similar price.)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

          Whilst tetra is niche, the real expense in the radios isn't the radio chip, but all the other features which are demanded by users.

          Adding higher bandwidth using a secondary device is basically trivial in vehicles (which should have been the initial rollout of an LTE based ESN).

          Could have provided a real world benefit to a large number of users at low cost, and then gradually develop the stacks over the top to provide the things that tetra does well.

          Of course there will also the be the requirement to actually cover the landmass of the UK, which isn't nearly as good as the mobile providers would have you believe, they deliberately measure the population covered, not the landmass - and as far as I am aware an LTE device can't just act as a relay in the way that (many) tetra radios can.

    3. trevorde Silver badge

      Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

      Please see my previous comments on ESN:

      https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/07/14/pac_emergency_services_network/#c_4696722

      ESN is the correct-ish choice as it gives a much richer experience to emergency services personnel eg multimedia (video + images + maps + files), location, encryption, video streaming etc. The main/only issue, when I was working on it, was the implementation was err, cr4p. The other issue is coverage but that is (easily) solvable by more base stations.

      FWIW, my nephew was training to be a plod and was complaining about how flaky AirWave (aka Tetra) was. I said he'd be *begging* them to give back the AirWave handsets when ESN was rolled out.

      1. Colintd

        Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

        Good to get an inside view, but the base station issue is only "easily" soluble if the government is prepared to pay for all the additional base stations, _and_ override the planning issues which have stopped masts being installed. There is no commercial justification for the additional investment to reach near 100% landmass coverage, and the government has just not been willing to foot the bill.

    4. UnknownUnknown

      Re: Our "leaders" and civil servants have no understanding of engineering and technology

      That’s because they binned off the experts.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Computer_and_Telecommunications_Agency

  2. VoiceOfTruth

    Motorola

    Should just pull out completely and say "fuck you".

    The CMA had nothing to say about shovelling billions to DIdo Harding for a useless piece of shit system for covid. I don't wonder why.

  3. VoiceOfTruth

    Politicians and tech

    "Successive governments lack understanding of how to buy tech"

    Years ago some tosspot Tory MP was talking about giving lessons to schoolchildren about how to use a web browser. This chinless nobody actually thought this was something necessary.

    There are too many lawyers and PPE+law graduates in parliament. They know how to waffle, but are basically useless if you broke down in the middle of a desert.

    1. UnknownUnknown

      Re: Politicians and tech

      I’m being overcharged on my tax by the last 50+ years of UK Governments ineptitude. Can I get a cap placed on that ?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Trump that!

    Well it's a £2 billion ($2.5 billion) ticket Keir can wave in Donald's face next time they meet.

  5. wyatt

    I use to be really interested in the deployment of UKESN. It's dragged on so long now that I've given up.

  6. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

    There would have been a price negotiated when the contract was first signed. Sounds like Motorola tried to increase the price after the fact, and were told (quite rightly) to stuff it.

    1. UnknownUnknown

      Unlike numerous other Govt contracts for legacy pieces of shit - many without a tender process - that have been renewed/extended. Some repeatedly.

      See The Register.

  7. Tron Silver badge

    Are there any figures...

    ...on how many members of the emergency services simply use their mobile phones instead.

    It is a fine line for the govt. to tread, as there are so few bidders for their outsourced tech projects. If Moto did pull out, they would be screwed. Ditto for all the other projects that are being extended because the replacement is years away for working. Governments have placed themselves over a barrel by endless poor management.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Are there any figures...

      On the basis that the tetra call records are used in court... I'm guessing it's not very many, at least not for important things.

      tetra and telephones are pretty different communication methods, even if they do look similar on cursory inspection,

  8. druck Silver badge

    At this rate ESN will be delivered around 2 years after they rip down the last 4G masts.

  9. rndSheeple

    The market comment though strikes me as odd

    As a non-uk person, what strikes me as interesting is the comment "if the market were functioning correctly".

    So the legal judgement is to drop the price of a service for company X, because IF there was a WORKING market, the price WOULD be lower.

    Does this not strike others as a really corrupt practice from the government. Market economy? Yeah unless we have to pay market price, then we just call the market broken and pay less.

    Who broke the market? How is it broken? If it's a cartel or monopoly, there should be legislation to manage that.

    Making a judicial decision like this is quite... smelly

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