TETRA  |   LTE  |  2022-10-04

CMA Delays Again report on Motorola Solutions' Role in UK Critical Communications Public Safety Network

Curated by: Gert Jan Wolf - Editor-in Chief for The Critical Communications Review

A UK government watchdog says that a report outlining a preliminary decision on whether Motorola Solutions' roles in UK public safety communications should be changed has been pushed back to October. This includes both the legacy Airwave TETRA system and the LTE-based Emergency Services Network (ESN).

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) released a new administrative timeline today for its investigation into whether Motorola Solutions should have to sell its profitable Airwave business, be subject to price controls, or take other steps to fix what have been called "excessive profits" from Airwave. After being pushed back three months to September, the much-anticipated provisional-decision report will now be finished in October, according to the new schedule. The administrative timeline also shows that response hearings will start in October, which can only happen if there is a provisional decision to which the parties can respond. This means that the provisional decision is likely to be finished within a couple of weeks. According to the new administrative schedule, response hearings are set to go on until November, and parties will be able to send in their final responses in November. The administrative schedule says that CMA will publish its final report about the investigation in December. If this schedule is followed, the CMA would finish its work about four months before the April 24, 2023 deadline set by law.