£75m police national network deal goes to C&W

Cable & Wireless (C&W) has won a £75m deal to provide managed voice, data, video, internet and hosting services to all police forces in the UK.

National police IT body the Police Information Technology Organisation has extended C&W's framework contract for the new Police National Network (PNN3) for a further five years.

The PNN provides a secure network for transferring data between police forces, and more than 100 organisations and agencies in the wider criminal justice community, and links to the Criminal Justice Extranet. The enhanced PNN3 will include voice over IP and videoconferencing for internal and force-to-force communications.

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Ian Readhead, deputy chief constable of Hampshire Constabulary and Association of Chief Police Officers lead for the PNN project, said PNN3 will play a pivotal role in driving towards a more modern police service.

He said in a statement: "It facilitates greater communication between forces and secure access to centralised data; making interoperability easier. This is a key recommendation of the Bichard Inquiry and allows us to deliver an effective, collaborative and integrated national, regional and local information-sharing and intelligence capability."

Migration from the existing PNN2 to PNN3 is due to be completed by October 2007.