Samsung secures contract to replace Airwave handsets for UK emergency services

£210 million deal covers quarter of a million handsets

The Home Office has signed a £210 million contract with Samsung, which will see UK emergency services using the company's 4G smartphones.

Samsung won the three-year contract last week, and will supply 250,000 toughened, water-resistant handsets to paramedics, firefighters and police officers, at a rough cost of £840 per phone.

These smartphones will have hardware and software features that support emergency services functionality and critical voice services, according to Samsung, including a 'push to talk' button to allow users to communicate instantly without having to dial a phone number.

Samsung reportedly won out against rival bids from Motorola and Sepura, a British specialist in emergency services communications.

A Home Office spokesman confirmed the deal with Samsung in a statement, saying: "Using a single ESN 4G device is more effective, efficient and less costly than using a combination of the existing Airwave devices and multiple commercial networks and standard 4G devices."

Suk-Jea Hahn, executive vice president of Samsung's global Mobile B2B Team, added: "We are excited to be part of the UK ESN project and awarded the contract to supply LTE smartphones and accessories for ESN in the UK.

"Next-generation public safety communications is an important area of focus for Samsung, and we are now looking forward to working in partnership with ESN and UK emergency services organisations to bring our technology to the entire public safety community on the front line, supporting the great work they do every day."

The Samsung contract is part of the redevelopment of the ESN network, which is costing £1.2bn and will eventually lead to the replacement of the current Airwave system with a new one based on EE's mobile network.

This first-of-its-kind system is designed to allow the emergency services to access the internet in the field, enabling police to feed back live video, paramedics to gain instant access to patient records and fire crews to download building blueprints before they tackle a blaze.

The current Airwave system will be phased out in stages from 2020.