Police paying over the odds for radio network

The failure in the UK to deliver a unified communication system for the emergency services has drawn criticism from the National Audit Office which also claimed the police force has not got best value from its contract with mmO2.

The Airwave system was originally intended for the three main emergency services, fire, police and ambulance, to use simultaneously - delivering lower costs, and saving lives in disaster situations by improving co-operation between the three services.

However, the ambulance and fire services dropped out of the bidding process, and the Police Information Technology Organisation signed a deal with BT to deliver a system to them alone, with options to add other users later.

A National Audit Office report has criticised the deal, saying the chance to benefit from economies of scale by supplying the three services together have been lost.

In March the Lancashire fire brigade started using Airwave, using the infrastructure deployed for Lancashire police services as a pilot project last year. mm02 itself estimates that it could gain as much as £5.5m per year in extra revenue if the other emergency services sign up.

An NAO spokesman criticised this figure, saying it was based on supplying just 12,500 radios out of a possible 50,000. It also excluded the possibility of substantial extra revenues from additional services deployed over the Airwave network.

Increased revenue should lead to lower costs per user, but the contract between the police and mmO2 doesn't allow for the price per user to be renegotiated - which could lead to the police paying too much for the Airwave service.

NAO chief Sir John Bourn told parliament: "The Airwave service should be a significant improvement in police communications but it is unfortunate that the benefits of a single procurement for all emergency services were not realised and that other emergency services will not, as yet, share the same high quality communications and information sharing capacity as the police."

BT signed the contract to build a new police radio system in February 2002, a bidding process which caused controversy when all the rival operators dropped out. mm02 took on responsibility for managing the Airwave infrastructure when it demerged from BT.

The Airwave pilot project in Lancashire has been dogged by all manner of controversy since the project was first mooted, but the general tone of the NAO report was quite positive.

Among other things, Airwave, which uses the Tetra standard, is encrypted, making it almost impossible for criminals to intercept police signals by scanning their radio frequencies.