The line items that actually matter
A total cost of ownership comparison stands or falls on completeness, not on either route's headline price. The quote that wins the meeting is rarely the cost that survives the audit. Here is everything each route spends over three years:
| Line item | PoC (network radio) | Conventional (licensed digital) |
|---|---|---|
| Handsets | £100–£300 each; premium display models £350+ | £300–£600 each for business-grade digital; basic analogue from £150 |
| Recurring | £8–£15 per radio/month (SIM + platform) | Ofcom Simple UK Light licence, £75 per 5 years for the whole fleet |
| Infrastructure | None — coverage is the mobile networks' problem | £0 if handheld-to-handheld suffices; £2,000–£4,500 per repeater installed where it doesn't |
| Programming & setup | Provisioned over the air, usually included | Fleet programming (channels, IDs, contacts) — dealer time, typically £10–£25 per radio, repeated after changes |
| Batteries & accessories | Li-ion packs fade like a phone's; budget one replacement cycle in year 3 | Same chemistry, same fade: £30–£60 per battery, plus multi-way chargers at £150–£300 per six-bay |
| Software extras | GPS, lone worker, messaging, dispatch usually bundled | Optional on digital systems, usually licensed per feature per radio |
Two practitioner notes on that table. First, dealers routinely discount conventional hardware 15–20% at quantity, so use street prices, not list. Second, batteries are the line everyone forgets: a 10-radio conventional fleet charging nightly will want most of its batteries replaced somewhere in year 2–3, and that £400–£500 never appears on day-one comparisons — for either technology.
Subscription vs licence: the recurring cost
The structural difference is simple. Conventional licensed radio pays Ofcom £75 per five years for a Simple UK Light licence covering the whole fleet — effectively £1.25 a month — and then owns its kit outright. PoC pays £8–£15 per radio, per month, forever. Over 36 months a 10-radio PoC fleet spends roughly £2,900–£5,400 on subscriptions alone; the equivalent conventional fleet spends £75. If the comparison stopped there, conventional would win every time.
It doesn't stop there, because the subscription isn't buying a licence substitute — it's buying national coverage on multi-network SIMs, the platform software, and the absence of any infrastructure to buy, site, maintain or eventually replace. The honest way to read the recurring cost is: you are renting the mobile operators' billions of pounds of network instead of building your own miniature one. Whether that rent is good value depends entirely on how much network you actually need — which is what the worked examples below test.
Worked example: 10 radios, one site
A distribution unit or school-sized site, everyone within a few hundred metres, no repeater required. Mid-range assumptions: £200 PoC handsets at £12/month, £450 digital conventional handsets.
| Cost over 3 years | PoC | Conventional (licensed DMR) |
|---|---|---|
| Handsets ×10 | £2,000 | £4,500 |
| Subscription / licence | £4,320 (10 × £12 × 36) | £75 |
| Programming & setup | £0 (over-the-air) | £200 |
| Batteries & chargers (yr 2–3) | £350 | £450 |
| Three-year total | ≈ £6,670 | ≈ £5,225 |
Conventional wins by roughly £1,400 — about £4 per radio per month — and keeps winning harder in years 4 and 5, when its only costs are batteries. That is the fair result: on a single self-contained site, PoC's national coverage is capability you're paying for but not using. The gap closes if the building needs a repeater for basement or steel-clad coverage (add £2,000–£4,500 to the conventional column and the two routes land within a few hundred pounds), but a genuinely simple site is a conventional radio job on cost alone.
Worked example: 40 radios, four sites plus vehicles
Now the geometry changes: four sites across a region, a dozen vehicles moving between them, supervisors who need to reach everyone. Conventional radio can only do this with a repeater at each site — and even then, the vehicles are out of coverage between sites unless you lease wide-area network access on top.
| Cost over 3 years | PoC | Conventional (4 repeater sites) |
|---|---|---|
| Handsets ×40 | £8,000 | £18,000 |
| Subscription / licence | £17,280 (40 × £12 × 36) | £300–£900 (technically assigned licences) |
| Repeaters ×4, installed | £0 | £10,000–£16,000 |
| Programming, maintenance, batteries | £1,200 | £3,500 |
| Three-year total | ≈ £26,500 | ≈ £32,000–£38,000 |
PoC wins by £5,000–£11,000 — and the conventional figure still doesn't buy site-to-site or on-the-road coverage, which the PoC figure includes as standard, along with GPS and dispatch. This is the general pattern: every repeater a conventional design needs moves roughly £2,500–£4,000 from PoC's deficit column to its surplus column, and multi-site linking pushes conventional costs up faster than radio counts do.
How the sums change at 5, 50 and 500 radios
5 radios
Costs are small either way (£1,000–£3,500 over three years). Choose on coverage and features, not price — the difference is a coffee round per week.
50 radios
The decision point. Single dense site: conventional's one-off costs amortise beautifully. Any spread of sites or vehicles: subscriptions beat infrastructure. Do the two worked examples above with your own numbers.
500 radios
Subscription is now a five-figure annual line, so procurement pressure works: per-radio rates of £6–£9 are negotiable at this scale. Conventional at this size means engineered multi-site systems with their own support contracts — the "no ongoing cost" story has quietly disappeared on both sides.
When each route wins
Conventional wins on cost when one site's direct radio-to-radio coverage genuinely does the job, the fleet will run five years or more, and monthly opex is unwelcome — the classic warehouse, school or venue. PoC wins on cost the moment the design sheet says "repeater", "second site" or "vehicles" — and it wins on capability well before it wins on cost, since GPS, lone-worker protection and dispatch arrive bundled. The wider non-financial trade-offs (reliability, network dependence) are covered in PoC vs two-way radio, licensing detail in the UK licensing guide, and if you're costing a switch from an existing fleet, start with the migration guide — transition costs belong in the model too.
FAQ
Is PoC always more expensive long-term?
No — only where conventional coverage is genuinely free, i.e. one site with no repeaters. Add infrastructure or extra sites and PoC is usually the cheaper route as well as the more capable one.
Can I cut the subscription by supplying my own SIMs?
Rarely worth it. The platform is most of the value and much of the price, many handsets are platform-locked, and a consumer SIM lacks the multi-network roaming that makes PoC coverage work. Negotiate the bundle rate instead.
What residual value does each fleet hold?
Conventional handsets hold modest second-hand value and keep working indefinitely. PoC handsets are worth little without a subscription — treat them as consumables in the model.
Should I include staff time in the comparison?
Yes, one line each: conventional needs someone to manage licence renewals and programming changes; PoC needs someone to manage the contract and user provisioning. Neither is heavy, but neither is zero.
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