The Airwave Network was first introduced in 2000 as a way to allow emergency services to communicate during major incidents without interruption.
All of Great Britain’s emergency services and over 300 public safety organisations communicate using the network and its coverage is actually superior to any of the publicly available networks, with 99 per cent coverage across the country.
The CMA has launched a market investigation, following a consultation earlier this year, which set out concerns about the impact of the dual role of Motorola as the owner of the company providing the current mobile radio network (Airwave Solutions) and as a key supplier in the roll-out of the planned new Emergency Services Network (ESN).
The ESN is superior to the Airwave network because it runs on 4G technology, instead of 2G, which will allow for live video streaming from officers on the scene and quick transfer of data relevant to ongoing incidents. However, it has faced...