Highways England awards NRTS contract to Telent Technology services

Highways England (HE) has awarded the second National Roads Telecommunications Service (NRTS) contract, valued £450m ($602m), to Telent Technology Services. The project aims to keep road users as safe and informed as possible on the UK's motorways and will run for seven years from March 2018. In addition, this technology will also continue to support the smart motorway and expressway programmes.
December 19, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
8101 Highways England (HE) has awarded the second National Roads Telecommunications Service (NRTS) contract, valued £450m ($602m), to 525 Telent Technology Services. The project aims to keep road users as safe and informed as possible on the UK's motorways and will run for seven years from March 2018. In addition, this technology will also continue to support the smart motorway and expressway programmes.


The new service will renew equipment and provide an open, flexible and scalable telecommunications network to meet the future needs of the business as well as support HE in the development of connected vehicles and 5G.

NRTS connects HE's seven regional control centres, the national traffic operations centre and the 30,000 roadside technology assets including message signs, CCTV cameras and emergency roadside telephones.

These items include 3,327 CCTV cameras, 3,774 message signs, 229 weather stations and 7,155 SOS phones. The network enables traffic information services to provide accurate, real-time travel information to drivers and travel news providers. The message signs help warn drivers of potential hazards and display real-time journey information.

Tony Malone, chief information officer at HE, said: “Safety is at the heart of everything we do and this network, the central nervous system for England’s motorways, enables us to operate safe roads. We are pleased to be working with Telent Technology Services to deliver the reliability, resilience and innovation that will enable us to keep drivers safe and informed on our roads.”

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Indra implements smart tunnel technology
    July 20, 2015
    Texeira Duarte has awarded Indra a contract for the design, installation and commissioning of intelligent traffic systems (ITS), control and communications for the Marao tunnel, currently under construction and which, spanning close to 6 km, is said to be the longest in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, Indra will also implement its tunnel control technology for the tunnel of the Mashhad Metro Line 2 in Iran. The global value of these contracts for Indra is more than US$8 million Indra
    Read More
  • Caltrans develops remote remedy for ailing VMS
    February 18, 2014
    A remote diagnostic system for variable message signs keeps Caltrans staff safer and makes them more efficient. District 12 of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintains roads in Orange County including 292 route miles of freeway lanes and 240 directional miles of full-time high occupancy vehicle or carpool lanes. All of these lanes are controlled from the district’s transportation management centre (TMC) using a network of 58 variable message signs (VMS) positioned alongside or abo
    Read More
  • Kapsch awarded mobility control centre management, Malaga
    December 7, 2017
    Austrian-based traffic technology provider Kapsch TrafficCom will implement its EcoTrafix software in a €5.8m (£5.11m) project to help create a Smart City Strategy, in Malaga. The solution is said to integrate all of the city’s systems for urban mobility and provide real-time data of the state of traffic, enabling citizens and visitors to choose the best mode of transport for their journeys.
    Read More
  • GPS delivers accurate journey time data for UTC
    January 27, 2012
    A new solution developed as a consequence of the UK's Freeflow project fuses GPS and UTC loop data to give more accurate predictions of journey times, benefting network managers and travellers alike. By Matt Cowley and Gareth Jones, Trakm8 and John Polak and Rajesh Krishnan, Imperial College London
    Read More

Highlighted Content