BT is reportedly set to miss out on a £895 million ($1.1bn) contract to upgrade radios used by the UK police and ambulance services.
The Telegraph reports that the UK government Home Office is poised to award a joint bid from IBM and Samsung that will see the duo run IT for the Emergency Services Network (ESN).
The ESN provides mobile services to the police, fire, and ambulance services in England, Scotland, and Wales.
BT had been considered a frontrunner for the contract, and just last week announced that it had signed a new £1.29 billion ($1.67bn) contract with the Home Office to provide mobile services for the government’s ESN over the next seven years.
Since 2015, BT has worked with the Home Office to build the ESN as part of a wider new Emergency Services Mobile Communications Program to replace the old Airwave system, which had been in place for more than two decades. Airwave had initially been selected to deliver the ESN, before being dumped.
First proposed in 2015, the ESN was meant to have been in use by 2020, but it has been plagued by delays.
The government launched the £895m ($1.1bn) tender in May of last year, as part of its search for Motorola's replacement.
In March of last year, the Home Office revealed it was unsure when the UK government’s 4G-based ESN would be ready after a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) found it could be delayed until 2029 or later. The report revealed that the Home Office paid out £45 million ($56m) to terminate its contract with Motorola Solutions two years early for the delivery of the core voice application for the ESN.
The Home Office has spent more than £2 billion ($2.5bn) on the ESN project so far, while spending a further £2.9 billion ($3.6bn) to keep Airwave going.
If Samsung and IBM are awarded the contract as reported, then the two will replace Motorola, which left the ESN program in 2022, after the UK imposed a price cap on how much Motorola Solutions can charge the emergency services to use its Airwave radio network, following an investigation by the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA).
Motorola rejected the claims as “unfounded and incorrect calculation” of excess profits, but did agree to end its involvement in the ESN in the same year. Earlier this year, the company filed a lawsuit against the government to recover unpaid bills for its work on the ESN, which has yet to be rolled out.
