The framework is designed to offer a centrally managed solution which, according to the Police ICT Company, will “free forces of the burden of individually letting and re-letting stand-alone Public Contract Regulation compliant contracts.”
Speaking of the announcement, Police ICT Company CEO, Ian Bell, said: “This is excellent news for the police service and its public sector partners, who will also have access to the framework. It ensures full price transparency and lowest cost across the supply chain over the course of the framework agreement.
“In addition to the clear and immediate benefits of significant efficiencies and discounts to forces, the fact that the Police ICT Company will manage the contract with Motorola and Sepura on their behalf will help streamline governance, reduce collective contract management burden and drive commonality.”
Fergus Mayne, Motorola Solutions´ sales director for UK and Ireland, said: "We are pleased to be part of the National Airwave Terminal Framework contract with the Police ICT Company to provide police forces with a very competitive offering of a wide range of devices and solutions for their mission-critical communications needs, including handheld, mobile and covert digital radio terminal options. Our portfolio is designed for the specific needs of police forces.”
Sepura’s UK sales director Gary Maughan, said: “We recognise that TETRA is the leading truly open standard for mission critical communications. TETRA has continued to evolve and Sepura is focused on delivering state of the art devices and compelling applications.
“We acknowledge significant value in The Police ICT Company’s successful establishment of a procurement framework for users to refresh their Airwave radios. This will enable customers to deploy innovative solutions today whilst also helping forces prepare for ESN in the future.
“We will work with the Police ICT Company framework to ensure that organisations are able to efficiently access the TETRA solutions that facilitate their day-to-day work of keeping the public safe.”
Police forces will need Airwave for several more years, following the recent announcement that the UK-wide broadband public safety communications project the Emergency Services Network, will not be able to provide mission critical push to talk in the immediate future. The contract to provide the aforementioned TETRA-based solution has been extended until 2022.
The process of establishing the framework was requested by the Home Office Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP), and concluded in November of this year.
