The UK Home Office has announced the launch of a market engagement exercise to identify potential suppliers capable of delivering over £1.1 billion worth of mobile communication devices for use by frontline workers on the UK’s new Emergency Services Network (ESN).

The initiative follows previous multi-billion-pound contracts awarded to BT/EE and IBM to support various elements of the ESN programme, which aims to deliver next-generation communications capabilities for police, fire, and ambulance services across the UK. Despite facing significant delays, cost escalations, and technical challenges, the Home Office is now in a position to engage with the market on device procurement.

According to a newly published procurement notice, the department has been “assessing the devices market for several years” and is now inviting all interested parties to participate in a structured engagement process starting next week. Over a three-week period, suppliers will have the opportunity to interact with Home Office commercial teams through several activities, including a webinar scheduled for mid-August.

The webinar will provide a briefing on upcoming tender activities, key timelines, desired procurement outcomes, and the proposed commercial framework. Registered participants will be able to submit written questions during or after the session, with anonymised responses to be shared publicly. The engagement is intended to offer insight into the detailed technical and service requirements for up to six categories of end-user devices.

These categories include:

• Vehicle-mounted devices

• Rugged handheld devices compatible with ESN

• Hybrid rugged devices supporting both ESN and legacy TETRA networks

• Non-rugged smartphones

• Intrinsically safe devices for hazardous environments

• Featurephones with limited smart capabilities

  
  

Following the market engagement, the Home Office anticipates launching a formal procurement process in early November 2025. The resulting framework agreement is expected to commence in summer 2026, running initially for four years with the possibility of extensions up to a total of eight years—taking the potential contract term through to 2034.

The estimated value of the contract stands at £1.11 billion.

Participation in both the engagement phase and subsequent procurement will require suppliers to sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and register on the government’s new Central Digital Platform—part of the enhanced Find a Tender Service. Suppliers are strongly encouraged to complete registration early to ensure eligibility.

This mobile device procurement marks the third major component of the ESN rollout. In August 2024, BT and its mobile network arm EE were awarded a contract worth up to £2.22 billion to provide connectivity services. In January 2025, IBM secured a £1.63 billion contract to lead the design, build, and operation of core systems, in partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, Frequentis, Exponential-E, and Palo Alto Networks.

The ESN programme, originally scheduled for completion in 2019, now targets full rollout by 2029—ten years behind schedule. The total forecast cost has nearly doubled, from initial estimates to £11.3 billion as of March 2024.

The project has also been overshadowed by legal disputes with Motorola Solutions, which was removed from the ESN programme in early 2023. Despite this, Motorola continues to operate the legacy Airwave network, which remains the primary communications system for emergency services pending ESN completion. Regulators have since imposed price controls after finding that Motorola was overcharging the government by hundreds of millions of pounds for Airwave services.