CMA again delays provisional-decision report on Motorola Solutions role in UK public-safety comms

A report outlining a provisional decision whether Motorola Solutions’ roles in United Kingdom (UK) public-safety communications—both the legacy Airwave TETRA system and the LTE-based Emergency Services Network (ESN)—should be altered has been delayed until October, according to a UK government watchdog.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today released a new administrative timeline for its investigation into whether Motorola Solutions should have to divest its lucrative Airwave business, be subjected to price controls, or be required to take other actions to remedy what has been described as “excessive profits” from Airwave. After the provisional-decision report was delayed for three months to September, the new timeline calls for the much-anticipated report to be completed in October.

It is likely that the provisional decision will be finished within a couple of weeks, because the administrative timeline also indicates that response hearings will begin in October—hearings that only can be conducted, if there is a provisional decision to which parties can respond. Response hearing are scheduled to continue into November, and parties will be allowed to submit their final responses in November, according to the new administrative timeline.

CMA is expected to publish its final report about the investigation in December, according to the administrative timeline. If this timeline is met, the CMA would complete its process about four months ahead of the statutory deadline of April 24, 2023.

Today’s delay of the provisional-decision report was not necessarily a surprise to industry sources who have been following circumstances in the UK. Liz Truss was announced as the new prime minister on Sept. 5, and new Home Secretary Suella Braverman was appointed on Sept. 6, which some speculated was behind the July announcement delaying the provisional-decision schedule by three months, to September.

In addition, UK government operations were disrupted by the Sept. 8 death of Queen Elizabeth II, which was followed by a nationwide mourning period through her funeral on Sept. 19. Given the situation, the CMA delaying the provisional-decision report by a few weeks was anticipated by many sources.

Shortly after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation in July, the CMA altered its schedule for its provisional decision in the Motorola Solutions case. The provisional decision was supposed to be finished in June—with many anticipating a public release in July—but the CMA at that time chose to delay the provisional decision by three months, to September.

CMA’s provisional decision is supposed to be finished in October, but it is unclear when the much-anticipated findings will be released publicly. Throughout its investigation, some items have not been released to the public until a month after being submitted initially, particularly documents that are subject to redactions of proprietary information. If this happens with the provisional decision, the CMA’s proposed remedies for Motorola Solutions—if any are recommended—may not be known publicly until November.

In contrast to the provisional-decision report, the latest administrative timeline states that the final report would be “published” in December.

At issue in the CMA investigation is Motorola Solutions’ role in the present and future communications systems supporting UK public-safety personnel. Motorola Solutions owns the existing Airwave TETRA system and is contracted to provide key software and services for the LTE-based Emergency Services Network (ESN) that originally was supposed to replace Airwave in 2019.

But the ESN still is not ready for public-safety use, resulting in the need for the expensive Airwave network to be used much longer than planned. The UK Home Office initially signed a three-year extension with Motorola Solutions to keep Airwave operating through 2022, and a four-year extension was signed late last year to ensure that Airwave would continue operating through 2026.

One issue for the ESN is the fact that the LTE network is not complete—notably, most of the rural cell sites that the UK Home Office is responsible to build have not been finished or are not operational.

In addition, ESN needs to have mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) implemented as a mission-critical-voice alternative to the existing LMR system. The MCPTT offering is supposed to be supplied by Motorola Solutions—based on the PTT platform gained by purchasing Kodiak in 2017—but UK Home Office officials repeatedly have cited MCPTT issues as key reasons for the delay in ESN.

Many UK officials have expressed concern that Motorola Solutions is slowing the delivery of MCPTT to ensure that UK first responders remain dependent on Airwave—a much more lucrative contract for Motorola Solution than the ESN. Motorola Solutions repeatedly has denied this, noting that there are numerous other area besides MCPTT that have created ESN delays.

Whatever the reasons for the ESN delay, it has become a costly proposition for the UK government and its taxpayers. According to a filing by Home Office Secretary Matthew Rycroft that was updated in May, the total cost of the Airwave-to-ESN transition has risen by 6.2 billion pounds—about $7.6 billion, or more than the total cost of the much larger FirstNet system in the U.S.—since the project was procured in 2015.

Potential CMA actions in the matter including requiring Motorola Solutions to divest Airwave or establish some sort of price controls on Airwave service. Motorola Solutions contends that no such remedies are needed or would be appropriate.