By Andy McCue, 16 August 2007 12:39
NEWS
A report into the 7/7 bombings in London two years ago has raised fresh concerns about the capacity and coverage of the Airwave emergency services digital radio network in the capital.
The latest London Assembly 7/7 committee report says despite significant progress in implementing its recommendations to improve emergency plans and procedures there are still problems and delays in implementing the Airwave network across the ambulance, fire and police services.
The Metropolitan Police Service will complete its delayed rollout of Airwave next month but the London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade will have to wait until September 2008 and November 2008 respectively.
One of the main concerns highlighted by the Metropolitan Police is that the original Airwave contracts do not provide for coverage in buildings or in-vehicles - only in the open-air. This has forced the Met to spend extra money for coverage in sites of strategic importance such as Wembley Stadium and Heathrow Airport - the project at Heathrow costing £2.4m.
Wireless from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out moreÂ…
A is for Antivirus
B is for Bluetooth
C is for The Cloud
D is for dotMobi
E is for Email
F is for FMC
G is for GPS
H is for HSDPA
I is for i-mode
J is for Japan Air
K is for Korea
L is for LBS
M is for M2M
N is for NFC
O is for Operating systems
P is for Pubs
Q is for QoS
R is for Roaming
S is for Satellite
T is for TV
U is for UMTS
V is for Virgin
W is for WiMax
X is for XDA
Y is for Yucca
Z is for Zigbee
There have also been problems with the capacity of the Airwave network and the Met said at the forthcoming Notting Hill Carnival it is having to place restrictions on the non-essential use of Airwave to reduce the risk of the network becoming too busy.
Other problems experienced during the Met's Airwave rollout include radios unexpectedly resetting themselves, backlight functions not working properly, poor battery life and difficulties training officers to use the new radios.
The London Ambulance Service rollout has also been hit by delays and the latest projection is for completion by September 2008, although the service told the 7/7 committee there is still "some risk to the rollout dates".
One of the technical issues for the London Ambulance Service is that a significant number of base stations in London will need to be upgraded to provide enough Airwave network capacity.
The implementation of Airwave across the London Fire Brigade was due to have been completed earlier this year but the latest projection is now for November 2008. This is because of delays with the national Firelink communications contract signed last year.
The project to provide Airwave coverage below ground so it can be used on the London Underground network is scheduled to be complete by August 2008 and new driver radio communications will be in place across the Underground as part of the Connect project by the end of this year.
The committee chairman and London Assembly member Richard Barnes said more work is needed to improve London's ability to respond to a major incident such as a terrorist attack.
He said in the report: "Our report highlights continuing problems with Airwave that need to be tackled to ensure emergency service personnel have access to the robust and effective communications systems they need. Anything less would sell them and the Londoners they serve short."
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Roger Huffadine
Airwave will NEVER be an emergency communications system, because you HAVE to use a 'base station' to communicate between handsets. A REAL emergency communications system permits 'back to back' working as well other modes. Whoever is responsible for purchasing the Airwave system for emergency services has removed a vital feature from the previous networks with the inevitable unnecessary associated loss of life.
2. Ranko Pinter
Roger Huffadine clearly does not know the Airwave system capability. The system is based on the European standard called TETRA which, like GSM, has become de facto standard for the Emergency services throughout Europe and beyond, and which, like the old analogue PMR, provides the direct terminal-to-terminal operation (without need of the infrastructure) as well as the automatic trunked operation (like GSM) plus lots more. May I respectfully suggest to Mr Huffadine to visit the website www.teramou.com and acquaints himself with the capability of TETRA
3. Ranko Pinter
Another much larger problem exposed by 7/7 bombing was the fact that neither Fire nor the Ambulance services were part of Airwave service at the time, but relied on their own incompatible systems. The problems of capacity and coverage with the Airwave system during 7/7 bombing in London could be largely attributed to the fact that the Metropolitan Police was the last force rolling out the Airwave TETRA system and was still in the process of fine tuning its capacity and coverage, at the time of the bombing.
Finland, The Netherlands, and Germany – to mention a few countries, have, from the start, planned TETRA network to serve ALL the emergency services – on the basis that it is the only way to provide effective response in times of disasters. By contrast, our Fire and Ambulance services have, for a number of years, tried to ‘go on their own’ with incompatible technologies - ignoring that hard-earned lessons, e.g. King’s Cross Fire and Clapham Junction disasters - before finally deciding to join the police in an integrated nationwide emergency mobile communication system. Will we ever learn?
4. Roger Huffadine
OK I've seen that DMO exists - now I need to read the ETSI documents to see if you need to know the group or individual addresses before you can talk. I also wonder given the nature of TETRA how many individuals can occupy one channel