Council Approves Huge Radio Contract

The Houston (Tex.) city council has approved the mayor’s proposal to award a $132.3 million contract to Motorola for a new 700 MHz trunked radio system that will be used by city agencies, including police, fire and EMS. According to city officials, the original bid was downloaded from the Web by 156 perspective bidders, but proposals were received from just two companies: Motorola and M/A-COMM. The evaluation process took almost a year, and included coverage and capacity, reliability and redundancy, features, management and maintenance, and the company’s previous experience. Motorola’s bid was “almost $7 million” lower, the city said. The largest portion of the contract, $76 million, will be for infrastructure required to cover tunnels and buildings, to connect to Harris County and other systems, and a possible connection from the regional electric utility. The city council approved $15.8 million in initial funding, which was obtained mostly from grant funds, for the nine-month design phase of the project.