Alongside its business slice this week, VodafoneThree said it will launch a National Critical Slice in 2027, giving emergency services and critical public services priority on its 5G network during incidents and periods of heavy demand. It is a genuinely interesting development, and it is also widely misunderstood already. It is not the Emergency Services Network, most businesses will never be able to buy it, and the useful question it raises has nothing to do with 999 at all.
The 30-second version
- Vodafone will launch a National Critical Slice in 2027 for blue light organisations and critical public services.
- It gives priority and assured performance on the 5G Standalone network when the network is busy or an incident is under way.
- It is not the Emergency Services Network. That is a separate government programme run by EE and BT with IBM, and it is years behind schedule.
- Ordinary businesses will not be able to buy it. The equivalent for everyone else is the business slice launched this week.
- The resilience question is worth asking anyway, and there are answers available today rather than in 2027.
On this page
What was announced
As part of the same SuperMobile announcement that introduced its business slice, Vodafone Business said it will launch a dedicated National Critical Slice in 2027.
It is aimed at emergency services and organisations delivering critical public services, and it runs on the same 5G Standalone network as the business slice. The stated purpose is to keep police, fire and ambulance crews connected during major incidents, emergencies and periods of heavy network demand, with priority connectivity and assured performance for applications where low latency genuinely matters.
No pricing, eligibility detail or firmer date was given at announcement.
What "critical" means in network terms
The word does a lot of work in telecoms marketing, so it is worth being precise about what is actually being offered.
A mobile network is shared. When a lot of devices in one area are busy, everyone gets less. That is ordinarily an inconvenience. During a major incident it becomes a problem, because the exact moment the emergency services most need data is also the moment thousands of other people in the same place are using their phones.
A slice sets aside capacity on the network so that traffic is not competing on identical terms with everything else. For a critical slice, the promise goes further than capacity: priority, so that traffic is served ahead of other traffic, and low latency, which matters for anything responding in real time rather than simply transferring a file.
None of this is about making a phone call work. Voice has been prioritised on mobile networks for a long time. It is about the data that modern emergency response depends on: body worn video, live mapping, patient records reaching a hospital before the ambulance does.
This is not the Emergency Services Network
This is the point most coverage of the announcement has glossed over, and it matters.
The Emergency Services Network is the government programme to replace Airwave, the ageing radio system that 999 services actually use for mission critical communication today. It has been running for years, it is substantially behind its original schedule, and the contracts sit with EE and BT for the mobile network and IBM for system integration, overseen by the Home Office. Airwave is still in service while that work continues.
Vodafone’s National Critical Slice is a commercial product, not part of that programme. It does not replace Airwave, it is not the ESN, and it is not the thing a fire service will use to talk to its crews. It is an additional route to prioritised data connectivity that a blue light organisation could choose to buy alongside what it already has.
| National Critical Slice | Emergency Services Network | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A commercial priority slice on VodafoneThree's 5G network | The government programme replacing the Airwave radio network used by 999 services |
| Who runs it | Vodafone Business | EE and BT for the mobile network, IBM for system integration, overseen by the Home Office |
| Status | Announced, launching in 2027 | Running years behind its original schedule, with Airwave still in service |
| What it replaces | Nothing. It is an additional option | Airwave, the current mission critical radio system |
| Who can buy it | Blue light and critical public services | Not a purchase. It is national infrastructure for the emergency services |
Both things can be useful at once. But if you read a headline suggesting Vodafone is taking over emergency communications, that is not what happened.
Who it is actually aimed at
Vodafone has described the audience as emergency services and organisations delivering critical public services. In practice that suggests police, fire and ambulance, and likely extends to parts of health, utilities and transport where an outage has consequences beyond inconvenience.
What has not been published is the eligibility test. "Critical public services" is a phrase that could be drawn tightly or generously, and where that line falls will determine whether this is a narrow product for a handful of organisations or something a wider group of infrastructure and healthcare bodies can access. That detail is worth waiting for rather than assuming.
What it means if you are not a blue light service
Directly, very little. You will not be buying this, and we would rather say that plainly than write an article implying otherwise.
Indirectly, it tells you something worth knowing. Prioritised connectivity is becoming a product you can buy rather than a property of the network you happen to be on. It has arrived at the top end first, for emergency services and large enterprises, which is how these things usually go. The business slice launched in the same announcement is the version aimed at ordinary companies, and over time the idea that all traffic is treated identically is going to look increasingly dated.
For now, the practical read is simple. If your business depends on connectivity in a way that would cause real harm if it failed, the answer is not to wait for a slice you cannot buy. It is to look at what you already have.
Where our customers actually meet critical connectivity
Most of the businesses we look after are not emergency services, but plenty have equipment where a failed connection has genuine consequences: telecare and nurse call in care homes, lift emergency lines, monitored intruder and fire alarms, and card payment in venues that trade in short, busy windows.
The pressing issue for all of those is not network slicing. It is the analogue switch-off on 31 January 2027, because a great deal of that equipment still runs over copper lines that stop working on that date. That is a today problem with a firm deadline, and it deserves attention well before a 2027 product launch does.
The question it should prompt about your own connectivity
The useful thing to take from this announcement is not the product. It is the question underneath it: what actually happens to your business when the connection fails or the network is saturated?
Most businesses have never answered that, and the honest answer is often that nothing happens, because nothing was set up to happen. There are established options, all available now:
- A second connection on different infrastructure, so a single fault does not take out both. A fibre line with a mobile backup fails differently from two lines from the same provider.
- A 5G router configured as automatic failover, which switches over on its own rather than requiring somebody to notice and plug something in.
- A phone system that diverts to mobiles when the line drops, configured in advance rather than arranged during the outage.
- A leased line where a contractual fix time and service credits genuinely matter, which standard business broadband does not carry.
None of that is new or exciting. All of it works today, which is more than can be said for a slice arriving next year.