What a shower!
This is another procurement shambles worthy of a public inquiry.
The UK’s Home Office has put up to £895 million ($1.1 billion) on offer in the search for a tech supplier to provide “user services” for the Emergency Services Network, a controversial public sector project that is delayed by more than five years and over-spent by billions of pounds. The ESN has long been intended to replace …
I'm not an expert in radio comms, but why do they want a solution based upon mobile phone tech? How long do mobile networks keep going in a power outage? It's not hard to enviage some sort of emergency which takes out power and/or masts. Plus, if you have an emergency in West Wales, are you on your own?
I'm not an expert in radio comms, but why do they want a solution based upon mobile phone tech?
Better speed and bandwdth than what's available with existing radio tech. There are other radio technologies that offer something better, but I expect they'd require investment in a nationwide network of masts. A solution based on existing phone network means existing infrastructure can be utilised with upgrading/extending where necessary.
How long do mobile networks keep going in a power outage?
Based on experience of the local phone mast and not-unusal powercuts...not long enough. I usually lose mobile signal after less than half an hour. That's a Vodafone-owned mast though - I'd like to think that EE base stations which would form the ESN would be upgraded to give them more resilience, although that might be a bold assumption on my part :-/
It's not hard to enviage some sort of emergency which takes out power and/or masts.
True, but those scenarios wouldn't be specific to phone masts - a TETRA mast could equally well cop an unfortunate lightning strike
I worked with that too - quite a lot of years ago now. At the time I remember it being a bit of a pain to integrate with compared to GPRS (which some of my other customers were using) but real-world performance offered similar speeds to GPRS. I've since moved on from working with those customers, but I expect that the improved performance of 3G/4G/5G from a simple GSM modem means that they'll have moved away from Mobitex by now.
"Plus, if you have an emergency in West Wales, are you on your own?"
I mean, quite often yes. But that's more to do with the lack of emergency services coverage here rather than any communications issues. Best to make your own way to hospital here, rather than waiting for an ambulance for example (and that's not a slur on the overworked WAS staff, there's just not enough of 'em).
You'd have thought they'd have learned by now.
It may well look like the upcoming standard, commercial offering is lacking a bell somewhere or one of its whistles is in the wrong key, but you can bet your bum that it'll be there and working years ahead of whatever your public sector project is supposed[1] to deliver.
COTS procurement beats reinventing the wheel every time.
[1] And you won't get that as all the bells and whistles will be descoped to get something out the door about ten years late.