Government Picks EE to Deliver 4G Network for UK Emergency Services

Mobile operator EE, which is on course to become part of BT, has today secured the sometimes controversial contract to deliver a new communications network for Britain’s Emergency Services (Police, Fire / Rescue and Ambulance) by using their new 4G (LTE) infrastructure.

At present the existing Emergency Services Network (ESN) is run by Airwave at a cost of around £3bn. The setup uses TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) technology, which is old and delivers very slow data speeds (7.2Kbps – this was supposed to be boosted to nearer 1Mbps but that never happened). On the other hand TETRA does have excellent coverage and doesn’t suffer from as many notspots as consumer mobile solutions.

By comparison the new contract is said to be worth around £1.2bn and its use of 4G would support the Government’s plans to have a more data-centric and cheaper set of emergency services, which for example could enable local police officers to fit live head cameras (a hackers dream) or for fire crews to pull up the schematics of a particular building in real-time.

Olaf Swantee, EE CEO, said:

“We are immensely proud to be selected to deliver this vital new network for Britain’s Emergency Services. We’ve worked closely with the Police and Ambulance crews to show the power of 4G in helping save time and save lives. We will now work tirelessly to deliver a highly resilient, truly nationwide 4G network to serve all of Britain’s Blue Light and First Responder teams across the UK.”

The dedicated EE Emergency Services team has promised to “work closely” with the current provider, Airwave, the Lot 2 service provider, Motorola, and Lot 1 delivery partner KBR, as well as all 300,000 end users to manage a smooth transition to the new 4G network from mid-2017.

However one significant problem is that 4G availability remains flaky. At present 4G population coverage is expected to reach 98% within the next year (currently 94%), but landmass cover will only achieve 90% by 2017 and this drops to 85% for data. The solution is apparently to use Satellites and a fleet of “Rapid Response Vehicles“.

In order to deliver new network EE will:

· Build a new, highly resilient dedicated core network for the Emergency Services

· Build more than 500 new sites, expanding coverage in rural areas

· Switch on low frequency 800MHz spectrum on more than 3,800 sites to enhance rural and indoor coverage

· Implement the capability to afford network access priority to Emergency Services when required

· Implement VoLTE (calls over 4G), and new LTE voice capabilities including ‘push to talk’

· Deploy a fleet of Rapid Response Vehicles to ensure maximum service availability

· Implement satellite backhaul for Britain’s most hard-to-reach areas

One clear benefit of all this could be that EE’s network will end up with some of the best 4G coverage of any operator on the market, which will surely please BT.