Category: News | Published: 2026-04-30
A 25m Deal To Keep UK Police Radios On The Air
UK police forces have just signed a 25 million pound no-bid contract to keep their existing radio network running for another six months, taking it into 2027 and, by extension, locking in the use of decades-old technology even longer. On the surface, this is a story about police radios. Look a little closer, and it is one of the clearest examples you will see of what happens when a major IT replacement project slips, year after year, and the only realistic option left is to keep paying for the old one.
The contract has been issued by the Police Digital Service to Motorola Solutions and Sepura, and it covers handsets, software, maintenance and support for the Airwave network used across the UK. Airwave is built on Terrestrial Trunked Radio, or TETRA, technology that first arrived in the early 2000s. The official notice says the extension is needed so that police, fire and ambulance services can "remain fully operational" until the long-promised replacement, the Emergency Services Network, is finally ready.
Why The Old Network Is Still In Charge
Airwave was never supposed to still be the backbone of UK emergency communications in 2026. The Emergency Services Network was first proposed back in 2012, with an original go-live target of 2017. The plan was to switch to a 4G-based system that would be cheaper to run, easier to upgrade and better suited to modern policing.
That plan has not aged well. The latest expectations put a fully operational replacement at 2029 at the earliest, more than a decade behind schedule. In the meantime, the existing police radios and the Airwave system they sit on have had to keep working, well past the lifespan anyone planned for. The bill for that has been substantial. The National Audit Office has put the cost of running Airwave alongside the development of its replacement at around 11 billion pounds over the past decade, with the new programme itself reportedly running about 3 billion pounds over budget.
In that context, 25 million for another six months is small change. But it is also a very visible reminder that the bigger picture is not really under control.
Why There Was No Tender
For a contract of this size, the lack of an open competitive process has, unsurprisingly, raised eyebrows. The Police Digital Service has defended the decision on practical grounds. While TETRA is an international standard, the UK's Airwave system uses proprietary encryption and stringent certification requirements, which means only a tiny pool of suppliers are approved to provide compatible police radios and supporting kit.
Bringing in a new supplier would mean putting them through a long accreditation process. By the time that was finished, the existing system might already be on its way out. The procurement notice says onboarding any new supplier would "require an extended period of time, likely exceeding the published ESN delivery schedule". In other words, even if a fresh competitor wanted to bid, they could not realistically deliver in time to be useful.
There are operational risks too. Swapping suppliers mid-flight on a system that frontline officers, paramedics and firefighters depend on every minute of every day means retraining staff, recertifying devices, and re-integrating with command and control. That is the kind of disruption nobody wants to introduce on a critical national service.
The Cost Of Vendor Lock-In
This is a textbook example of vendor lock-in playing out in real time. Critics, fairly, point out that allowing one or two suppliers to dominate a critical service for this long limits competition, restricts pricing power and concentrates accountability in ways that are not healthy. Motorola in particular has drawn attention because of its involvement in both the legacy Airwave network and aspects of the replacement programme.
Supporters argue, equally fairly, that this contract is a pragmatic response to a difficult situation. Emergency communications are mission-critical. Police radios that mostly work, with coverage and resilience that frontline crews trust, are arguably more valuable than a shiny new system that is not quite ready. From this angle, the 25 million extension is less about clinging to old technology and more about buying time until something genuinely fit for purpose can take over.
Both views are right at the same time, which is exactly what makes legacy IT decisions so painful.
What This Means For Your Business
Most UK businesses are not running national police radios. But the underlying lesson here applies across the board. Almost every organisation has at least one system that is older than it should be, embedded deeper than anyone expected, and dependent on a small number of suppliers who know it.
The Airwave saga shows how easily replacement timelines slip, how expensive it gets to run the old system and the new programme in parallel, and how quickly your options narrow once you are tied into proprietary technology. The right time to think about that risk is not when the contract is up for renewal. It is years before.
The practical questions are simple. Do you actually know which of your platforms count as legacy? Do you know what they cost you each year, including the hidden costs of workarounds and additional support? Do you know who else could realistically support them if your current supplier put their prices up tomorrow, or walked away entirely? And do you have a sensible, properly costed plan for moving on, with realistic timelines that account for the kind of slippage the police radios programme has experienced?
This is exactly the lens we bring to our managed IT services. We help businesses spot legacy traps before they become emergencies, plan modernisation work in stages that do not put day-to-day operations at risk, and stay out of the kind of long-term lock-in that turns a technology decision into a 25 million pound headline.
The story of the UK's police radios is not really about TETRA, or Motorola, or even ESN. It is about what happens when complex IT modernisation is left too long. Most businesses can avoid that fate, but only if they stop putting the conversation off.