The French Lagaredere Group’s Matra Communications SA subsidiary is sueing the UK’s Home Office for damages, claiming it was excluded from tendering a bid for a national digital mobile radio network for the emergency services. The Quadrant Consortium, which includes British Telecommunications Plc, Nokia Oy, Motorola Inc and TRW Inc, won the contract back in October (CI No 3,269), but only after all the other bidders had withdrawn, points out The Financial Times. Matra’s main objection was the Home Office’s insistence on specifying Nokia’s terrestrial trunked radio system Tetra as the underlying technology, while Matra uses a competing technology, Tetrapol. It claims a failure to consider equivalent technologies is a breach of European Union rules.
