UK Home Office inks $1.62 billion deal to extend BT Group’s ESN work to 2032

BT Group—the parent company of United Kingdom (UK) wireless carrier EE—this week announced that it signed a £1.29 billion ($1.62 billion) with the UK Home Office to provide mobile services as part of the government’s Emergency Services Network (ESN).

This contract was not a surprise, as EE has been the ESN network provider since the Home Office awarded the initial public-safety-broadband contract in 2015—a deal that is due to expire at the end of this year. Under the new contract, BT Group will continue to provide these services for 7.25 years, with an option for an additional year, according to a BT Group press release about the dealv.

Bas Burger, CEO of BT’s business unit, said the UK communications company looks forward to continuing its role in the ESN initiative.

“BT Group has been a committed longstanding partner for Britain’s Emergency Services Network (ESN),” Burger said in a prepared statement. “We’re proud to double down on this commitment today by broadening the scope of our agreement with the Home Office until 2032 and beyond, as the [UK] government takes ESN from build through to delivery and operation of this critical network. 

“Essential public services like these depend on a rock-solid digital foundation. Through our award-winning EE mobile network, we’ll continue to play a central part in delivering mission-critical, trusted communications for the emergency services on the ground, in the air, and wherever they need to operate—helping them connect for good and protect the communities they serve nationwide.” 

In addition to providing 4G connectivity to UK first responders, the new contract calls for the BT Group to “take management responsibility and provide coverage services for the Home Office’s Air-to-Ground (A2G) network, their Extended Area Services (EAS) sites, London Underground and specific road and rail tunnels,” according to the company press release. 

While this contract was expected, the Home Office has not yet announced the vendor that will replace Motorola Solutions as the provider of key software for the ESN—notably, a push-to-talk (PTT) solution. This PTT offering on the 4G ESN is critical, because the functionality is needed before UK public safety eventually can retire the nationwide Airwave TETRA system that is owned by Motorola Solutions.

A UK Home official indicated in March that the replacement for Motorola Solutions for ESN software leadership could be revealed as early as August but there has not been an announcement to date.

To enable this transition from Airwave, ESN service needs to support mission-critical push-to-talk communications, like the Airwave TETRA network does today for UK first-responder agencies. This functionality originally was supposed to be provided by Motorola Solutions, but the public-safety vendor giant in November 2022 announced it would depart the ESN initiative.

Motorola Solutions actually told Home Office officials of the company’s plans to exit the ESN project in November 2021 amid a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation that initially threatened to force Motorola Solutions to divest its ownership of the Airwave system, according to the PAC introduction to the Home Office response.

Motorola Solutions continues to own the Airwave TETRA system, but the CMA ruled that Airwave should be subject to price controls that project to cost Motorola Solutions more than $1 billion in projected revenue from the system during the rest of the decade. Motorola Solutions appealed this finding to the UK Court of Appeal, which conducted a hearing on the matter last month but has not yet issued a ruling.

UK Home officials are hopeful that the new BT Group and the new software vendor will deliver better results to the ESN initiative than have been realized to date. The ESN project is significantly over budget and behind schedule, based on the original vision for the public-safety broadband network.

The LTE-based ESN initially was supposed to replace the Airwave TETRA system as the mission-critical network for UK first responders in 2019, but UK officials now do not expect the transition to happen until the end of the decade, although a firm date has not been provided.