unable to enable sierra modem due to policykit

I have a machine running ubuntu 16.04 and mmcli 1.6.4 with a Sierra MC7710 modem installed. It's currently showing

mmcli -m 0 -w
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/0: Initial state, 'disabled'

when i try and enable it

mmcli -m 0 -e

I get the following error

error: couldn't enable the modem: 'GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.ModemManager1.Error.Core.Failed: PolicyKit authorization failed: 'GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 was not provided by any .service files''

1 Answer

Uninstalled policykit and re-installed with

sudo apt-get install policykit-1

and the command then worked.