UK Home Office plans to seek MCPTT option to Motorola Solutions for ESN, CMA says

UK Home Office officials plan to procure a mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) service from a vendor other than Motorola Solutions for the Emergency Services Network (ESN), but it has asked the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) to impose new interworking requirements on Motorola Solutions.

Public-safety agencies in the UK primarily rely on TETRA radio service from Airwave Solutions—a company owned by Motorola Solutions since 2016—for mission-critical voice communications. The LTE-based ESN was supposed to provide a replacement MCPTT service by the end of 2019, but that technological transition has been delayed multiple times and is not scheduled to be completed until the end of 2026.

Home Office officials repeatedly have blamed Motorola Solutions for its role in the ESN delay, noting that development of its Kodiak push-to-talk-over-cellular (PoC) solution into a MCPTT offering has not met the ESN timeline. The CMA is investigating whether Motorola Solutions is taking advantage of its position as owner of Airwave and as a key ESN vendor to make excessive profits on the legacy TETRA system.

With this in mind, the Home Office told the CMA that it plans to seek bids for a second MCPTT vendor for ESN to challenge the Motorola Solutions-owned Kodiak offering. However, the Home Office asked the CMA to establish new rules for Motorola Solutions that would require the vendor to provide interworking functionality that would link the second MCPTT offering to the Airwave network during the planned 27-month transition period.

“As a result of Motorola’s delivery failures, resulting in substantial delay to ESN, the Home Office intends to procure an alternative MCPTT service (Alt-MCPTT),” according to a recently published letter from the Home Office to the CMA.

“For all users to effectively transition from the Airwave Network to the ESN utilizing an Alt-MCPTT, the Alt-MCPTT would require network access to—and internetworking with—the Airwave Network on at least the same or on an equivalently good basis as the access and interworking Motorola has developed between the Airwave Network and the ESN for the Kodiak MCPTT.”

While there are many points of contention surrounding the CMA investigation—notably, Motorola Solutions’ repeated denials that the company has abused its UK positions to maximize profits—there is agreement on the fact that there needs to be a lengthy transition period in which both Airwave and the ESN need to operate simultaneously and support interoperable communications—also known as “interworking”—from both the narrowband and broadband networks.

This notion was supported by the Deloitte consulting firm, based on the summary of a Feb. 10 hearing that Deloitte had with the CMA. This summary was released publicly for the first time this week.

“Deloitte explained that the interworking solution is the technology enabling users to communicate with each other between the Airwave and ESN networks during the 27-month period of transition,” according to the summary of the Deloitte hearing. “The interworking solution is already built, and is a bespoke solution designed by Motorola, contracted through Airwave Solutions, to allow for the gradual transition from the Airwave network to ESN.

“Deloitte noted that, given the interworking solution is bespoke and part of the Airwave contract, the Home Office would require Motorola’s agreement to extend interworking if an alternative application to Kodiak was introduced and the Home Office wanted to avoid an overnight ‘big bang’ transition, which is not considered possible or credible.”

In its interworking submission to the CMA, the UK Home Office proposed that the CMA impose a remedy requiring Motorola Solutions and/or Airwave “to negotiate and provide an interworking solution on reasonable request” from the Home Office or other entity that uses or provides radio services in Great Britain.

CMA action is needed in this area, because “the current contractual requirements on Airwave to provide interworking are limited and do not extend to Motorola,” according to the Home Office submission about interworking.

Home Office officials also had a hearing with the CMA on March 2, during which they stated the belief that such a TETRA interworking capability likely would be unprecedented for Motorola Solutions.

“So far as the Home Office is aware, Motorola has not provided such an interface … to any third party,” according to the CMA summary of the Home Office hearing that was released recently. “Motorola therefore effectively locks Dimetra [name of Motorola Solutions’ TETRA offering] customers into buying both switching and base-site infrastructure from Motorola.”

In this March hearing with the CMA, Home Office officials reiterated complaints that the UK government agency has not received as much information from Motorola Solutions about the operation of the Airwave network as desired.

“The Home Office said that, in its view, Airwave Solutions was extremely profitable and had earned a return that the Home Office believed was significantly above what it would consider appropriate or reasonable,” according to the CMA summary of the Home Office hearning. “Due to the lack of transparency in the contract, the Home Office said it was only able to assess this by inferring what it could from Motorola’s published accounts.

“The Home Office noted that a requirement for greater transparency around price would be beneficial, as well as a requirement that Motorola continue to provide access to the Airwave network for the purposes of interworking.”

Whether such an MCPTT interworking arrangement would be necessary is questionable, based on the CMA’s summary of its February hearing with Motorola Solutions that was released earlier this month.

“Motorola has implemented an interworking solution, which is designed to function with its ESN Push-ToTalk (Kodiak) functionality, that allows the Airwave network to communicate with ESN,” according to the CMA summary of the hearing.

“Motorola explained that, as part of the 2018 reset, it was agreed that in the event the Home Office decided it wanted to move to a different Mission Critical Push-To-Talk (MCPTT) solution (that was not Motorola’s Kodiak solution), Motorola would provide a standards-based interface into the Airwave network to allow for a third party to connect to the interworking solution.”

Under the current ESN schedule, UK public-safety agencies would begin transitioning its mission-critical voice communications from Airwave to the ESN by the fall of 2024—less than two-and-half years away—and be completed by the end of 2026. This schedule calls for a 27-month period during which both Airwave and ESN will be used by UK first responders, but Motorola Solutions officials told the CMA that the two networks will need to operate simultaneously for a lengthier period than the current schedule contemplates.

“In Motorola’s view, both the Airwave network and ESN would run in parallel for longer than the Home Office envisioned,” the CMA summary of the Motorola Solutions hearing states.

“Motorola explained that the ESN programme has been troubled for many reasons including devices, programme management and interfaces. Motorola was of the view that ESN would continue to go through a lot of evolution, but ultimately it would be deliverable.”

These hearings and the recently released information about the CMA investigation were posted just months after the Home Office announced a $2.09 billion, four-year deal with Motorola Solutions to extend the life of the Airwave system through the end of 2026, which is the current target date for completion of the ESN—the UK public-safety LTE initiative that already is several years behind schedule and is scheduled to cost UK taxpayers several billion dollars more than projected almost a decade ago.

Despite the new Airwave extension, the Home Office has asked the CMA to consider mandating price controls on Airwave that not only would limit Motorola Solutions’ profits from Airwave—the vendor is set to realize about £1.2 billion ($1.66 billion) in “excess profits” from 2020 through 2026, according to a July 2021 report from the CMA—but would incent the company to deliver on its ESN commitments.

CMA plans to issue its provisional decision on the matter in June, with a final report scheduled for release in September, according to a updated timetable posted by CMA.