How the Police, and the Public, are being mislead about Airwave.
An Insider Evaluation of the Propoganda.
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I am posting this in a few choice UK newsgroups who have some interest
in the police radio system. If you take offence to this then I
apologise, but I think you will find what this post contains
interesting. At least I hope you do!

Let me be quite clear about a few things first of all. It is the
government's fault that police forces have had to switch to Airwave.
They have sold off frequencies we have been using for years with no
major problems. Do not blame your local police force for buying into
duff technology, they had little choice in the matter. And for those of
you who might read the items below and say 'purely teething problems',
then let me say this: We are something like the 38th Force to go live
with Airwave. o2 have had 37 previous installations to make their cock
ups and learn by them. Our Force has also been using Airwave (in a
testing capacity) for well over a year, and live for 6 months in some
areas. NONE of the technical problems raised time and time and time
again have been fixed during any of this.

Our communication equipment provider for control rooms also appears to
be totally inept when it comes to getting the data-display side of
things working. The 'last officer calling' function, whereby their
callsign and warrant number is displayed in the talk-group button on
the system is wiped out and replaced with either a blank space or
gibberish the moment the controller transmits. The 'subscriber' screen
- a utility on the control system that shows which officers are on a
particular talkgroup, also fails to function correctly. Those who are
off duty do not 'fall off' the display, meaning that there is around 50
pages of 'subscribers' on any talkgroup, most of them off duty. Very
useful! There are hundreds of other minor problems as well, but the
discussion of them is not the purpose of this post. It is merely to cut
through the propoganda being issued by the Government, O2 and probably
your local force about how peachy everything is. It isn't.


"What are the benefits of Airwave?"

o) Greatly improved coverage throughout force

This is a mixed bag. I have personally witnessed communications being
crystal clear in the depths of town x (read: middle of nowhere where
previously neither UHF or VHF could penetrate), yet o2 appears
completely unable to give us a clear signal outside Major University,
just yards from the major county motorway for which force Police,
along with all other major A roads in the county, have contracted for
100% coverage. Reception is also **** poor in major City centre,
major city centre, major city centre, major city centre and
major city centre. If by 'coverage' they mean the ability to transmit
something - anything! - then yes it has improved. I thought the point
of 'communication' was being able to be understood when trying to
transmit though.


o) voice clarity and an end to background noise

This partly goes hand in hand with the last entry. Voice is anything
but clear. When in the control room I have my headset volume up to 120%
on the touch-screen control equipment, and also have the built-in
headset volume control set to 3 (max), and I still struggle to hear
what anyone is saying the majority of the time. There appears to be a
total lack of bandwidth available for clear voice communications,
compounded by the effects of lack of coverage. It is essentially like
the early days of Internet telephones, were 2 people across the world
were attempting to communicate via 2400baud modems. It simply didn't
work. The noise cancelling was sold to us to also be a major advantage.
Why is it then that as soon as the officer turns on the sirens, I can't
hear a bloody thing they are saying? The moment they step into a busy
pub/club, all I can hear is music and background chatter. This feature
doesn't work either. And for the cynics, regarding the volume - no I am
not deaf. Switching back to UHF I car hear them fine.

o) secure encrypted comms that prevent scanning of police transmissions

Granted, the system is secure and encrypted. It also works quite fast.
Most of the time. However this does mean that while the criminals can't
listen in to transmissions, neither can anyone else. I know that in the
past I have assisted the police when off duty by phoning in seeing a
'suspicious male' hanging around or hiding somewhere based purely on
the description given out over the air by controllers a few moments
earlier. We as a police service have now automatically excluded this
unauthorised - but none the less appreciated - help. In an even more
indirect fashion listening to 'force' transmissions on VHF, I have
avoided accidents that have just happened, reducing the burden on the
service either trying to attend, or who end up dealing with the
resulting backlog of traffic. The same accident then appeared on my FM
car radio via Traffic Announce about 20 minutes later. The end result
was I also managed to get to work on time.


o) digital comms that will enable staff to communicate by radio by
phone or by text

I won't discuss the radio element (radio as we mostly know it, e.g.
broadcast or All Informed transmissions) as I think it covered well
above. However the telephone element is fine, except that officers can
only phone OUT from the handsets. For a maximum of 10 minutes. They
cannot receive incoming *telephone* calls from anywhere, except
Superintendants and control room staff. Useful. Text? Don't make me
laugh.. if you saw how complicated it was to actually COMMUNICATE via
text message, you wouldn't bother either. It isn't as simple as just
write and send. If you want to send it to someone in the control room
it is even worse. It is a system that will never be used, despite us
being in the 'text generation' due to its complexity and high failure
rate. Point to Point communications, e.g. using the radio as a radio,
but for a private call between only two individuals works well
providing there is no one transmitting on the main talkgroup. In a busy
division like say busy division, there is rarely any point during the
day where there isn't traffic on the main talkgroup, thereby rendering
this otherwise useful service, totally useless. It is made even worse
by controllers being told that they MUST NOT authorise talkthru on the
main talkgroup. Great... so how do we communicate then? Oh.. I know..
back to personal mobiles it is then.

o) access to local and national databases

Oh? Where? I do not have access to PNC, local intelligence, or any
other kind of database from my handset. My 'access to local and
national databases' is as it ever was. Ask comms, go back to the car
and use the MDT, or waste even more time and go back to the station.

o) introduction of emergency button that will improve officer safety

Yes.. when it works. Numerous times officers have pressed their
emergency button only to be told 'call failed', or 'no coverage' or on
pressing it for the required two seconds, find it doesn't fire because
someone in comms happens to be talking at the time (Yes comms staff
have a higher transmission priority than the emergency button!). How is
it then that this will improve officer safety? I can't even hit people
with my radio anymore if needs be, as the thing will shatter in to a
million pieces. In UHF/VHF days I could scream 'HELP!' even if someone
was talking. The controller would have a hard time trying to hear me
over the other person when I gave details, but at least it was
possible. With Airwave I just get 'BUSY' if I try and transmit, and end
up in a queueing system. But of course, this improves officer safety.
As a side note, when you are getting your head kicked in, have you any
idea how long 2 seconds is...? The button is also extremely hard to
push in and keep pushed in, all while trying to defend yourself.


o) Improved communications will mean officers can be deployed to calls
more speedily.

If anything I have described above can be seen as 'improved', then you
need to seek help immediately. There was never a problem deploying
officers the old way. The majority of the time VHF/UHF worked fine, or
as a last resort sending the job to the car MDT.

o) Staff will be able to access information regarding incidents, people
or vehicles directly through their Airwave radios.

Yes, we can retrieve some information regarding incidents, but it is
via text message, which we need to send first to request. It is a
convoluted process and by the time we have finished typing out the
request text message (which contains a lot of special characters like
#), we'll probably be there. I cannot access any information regarding
people or vehicles directly via by handset. I suspect when we are
finally able to it will be via the same method, e.g. text, and will be
quicker to call the PNC desk and ask. Text messages are also limited to
120 characters. Not very useful at all. The last two sentences
consisted of 73 characters...

o) Improved communications will mean less time in the police station
and more time on the streets.

Pure propoganda and an attempt to justify the 2.3 billion pound price
tag for the system. How improving communication will result in me
spending less time in the police station is a mystery. Is there a
feature of Airwave that automatically completes my paperwork for me?
Please tell me! I will gladly use it no matter how complex.

o) The ability to communicate directly with other forces and other
emergency services.

Neither my county's fire or ambulance services subscribe to airwave. I
can chat to neighbouring forces if I want to, but the only force I
personally border with the majority of the time is a big expanse of
water.. so no advantage there.

o) "Our colleagues in other forces are already catching more criminals
as a result of using Airwaves digital technology."

One word. Tripe! Airwave offers nothing in effect - due to the
technical problems - that MASC or similar technologies doesn't offer
already. Pure propoganda again.


Yes this is a humerous, but none-the-less serious look at the state of
play in todays police radio service. Don't flame me for my comments and
points of view. I'm sure if you speak to other officers of any number
of forces, you will get a similar view point.

If you got this far, congratulations and thanks for reading. The next
time someone in authority mentions airwave to you, perhaps you'll
remember this post and be able to raise a few points with them. It
should be an interesting conversation... that is, if they decide they
want to continue to talk to you at all...

Yours,

PC 5029 Concerned Officer.
Some Station,
Some Force,
Some Where.