telent wins first major contract

The contract, which has a minimum duration of five years, has an estimated value of approximately £36 million. O2 Airwave, operator of the UK's secure digital communications network for emergency and public safety organisations, announced in October 2005 that it had been awarded a contract by the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) to deliver a National Fallback Service (NFS), which will provide enhanced levels of resilience to the Airwave network. O2 Airwave has awarded telent a sub contract to build the microwave radio backhaul infrastructure for this important national project. Over the coming 24 months telent will design, build and install a resilient backhaul network using rings of microwave radio circuits, which will replace the existing fixed line links. The contract provides for telent to support the new network for up to ten years. Used by more than 140,000 officers across every police force in England, Scotland and Wales including the British Transport Police, the Airwave service provides seamless radio coverage across 99% of the country – a massive improvement on the coverage provided by such organisations' legacy networks. Reliable communications plays a vital part in the daily operations of emergency services. Airwave already meets stringent reliability requirements by offering resilient communications and enabling quick recovery in the unlikely event of network outage.