The U.K. government released a prior information notice (PIN) for devices to operate on the Emergency Services Network (ESN), the public-safety Long Term Evolution (LTE) nationwide network planned to replace the country’s TETRA network managed by Airwave.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department intends to put in place a dynamic purchasing system (DPS) for use by the three emergency services and other ESN users. The estimated duration of the ESN devices DPS is a minimum of four years, and the estimated cost is between 30 to 150 million pounds (US$39 million to US$197.1 million).
The requirements include establishing a DPS for ESN devices, accessories and services to allow suppliers to bid for and supply ESN-approved devices. Approved devices will be tested to ensure they are capable of carrying out public-safety communications services and do not adversely affect the ESN and/or the Airwave network.
The department is requiring 1,500 production standard trial devices of various types for operational trials and pilots starting mid-2017. These trials devices will be procured incrementally, using the DPS, for the operational trials and pilots. About 300,000 production standard devices will be required for the three emergency services to transition from Airwave to ESN with the first procurement starting in the second quarter of 2017, prior to the start of the first regional transition in September 2017.
The categories of devices include the following:
• Handheld devices — standard, ruggedized, single and dual-mode LTE/TETRA devices;
• Specialist — direct device-to-device communications;
• Active accessories — wireless, wired and batteries;
• Passive accessories — cases and device carriage on clothing;
• Vehicle devices — four-wheel vehicle ESN modems, devices and gateway devices and two-wheel vehicle ESN devices and waterborne ESN devices;
• Vehicle accessories;
• Vehicle installation design and implementation;
• Managed services; and
• Unified — any combination of the other categories
There will be 12 regions with a staggered start, and each region will take up to a year to transition. The transition is forecast to last up to 27 months and should be completed by the end of 2019.
Taken from Southgate ARC's news site.
