UK Labour against ESMCP emergency services tender

The Labour Party has firmly signalled its opposition to the government's £1.2bn Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP).

The party wants the government to review the tender on grounds of the short timelines put in place to complete the project, and concerns with the technology which will see the current TETRA radio network replaced by a 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) broadband voice and data network.

Labour contends that the speed of the tender process is likely to put public safety at risk, arguing that there is an "unseemly haste" to complete the procurement process before the forthcoming general election.

A Labour party source said, "One of the most startling things about the process is the short timelines that have been put in place by the Government for completion of the project. The current contracts are due for renewal between 2016 and 2020, therefore the Government has little time to test and implement the technologies. This is a marked difference to the current system, which was tested over a far longer period of time."

It added, "The second issue is with the technology itself. There are suggestions that in migrating emergency communications over to a civilian system, the civilian parts of the networks would be 'scrambled' during times of extreme emergency. Additionally, the system that is now in place has 98% coverage, whilst within civilian networks up to 21% of UK landmass is affected by partial 'not-spots'. These are areas in which mobile phone coverage is provided by one or two of the civilian mobile operators but not all four and where there is no coverage available at all. In order to work effectively the new system would have to ensure that those 'not-stops' have been eradicated. Again, the short timelines therefore become an issue."

Although none of the vendors involved in the tender process would speak publicly, one pointed out it is highly probable that LTE will be the future for emergency services communications based on its low latency capabilities. However, it requires further developments/enhancements which are underway in Release 12 and Release 13, and which may require further releases.

In Europe, said one vendor, Holland and Belgium, are extending their existing TETRA networks, whilst Germany is just concluding the rollout of its TETRA network. Norway too is in the process of rolling out TETRA for its emergency and public safety services.

In the US, there are LTE network deployments taking place in Harris County in Texas, and in Los Angeles where the Los Angeles Regional Interoperability Communications System (LA-RICS) is scheduled to be completed in Summer 2015.