I can't talk to my colleague standing a hundred yards away!
This "wonderful" new toy came to us about three years ago and was expected to make our job all the much easier and all the more safer. It was called "airwave" to me it sounded like a brand of chewing gum but when I walked into the room for training I was given something that looked like a mobile phone that had let itself go.
We were told we would be able to talk to other forces, dial each other up and talk privately to each other and more importantly, the clarity was supposed to be excellent and secure.
Then we started using them and it was quickly realised that not everything in a new box which shines is good!
We initially were using them on the old analogue system because not everyone had changed over to airwave and were still using their old brick radios. It quickly became apparent, that although the old ones were big, at least they worked!
We switched over to digital and that's where things went from bad to worse. The annoying little beeps on opening and closing of the channel soon sent everyone of us running for the mode functions to turn it off. We were seeing on regular intervals the emergency button being pushed but no one had actually pushed it. Our radios were keying up without the PTT button being pressed and we could hear our colleagues talking about what they were having for dinner, or worse still, they were talking about someone else and we could all hear it!
The funniest scenario was an Inspector who was taking a shower and was heard singing in there whilst his radio was on permanent send and sitting on the bench with the rest of his kit!
Then there's the outages. I've never known a radio where you can be sitting in an area car and your colleagues radio is picking up a transmission but you, sitting three feet away get nothing. Then all of a sudden it kicks in and you pick up half a message.
Great if you want to avoid work but when it comes to officer safety, airwave is next to useless! We've joked about getting paper cups and string because it would be more reliable! Notting Hill Carnival recently is a casing point! The system was so overloaded due to 11,000 officers all trying to use it at the same time!
Then there's the problem with buildings! They don't always work in there! which makes for a really useful situation when confronted with danger and nothing happens when you press your emergency button.
Now if I went to O2 to buy a mobile phone and it didn't work in a building I wouldn't expect them to turn around and say to me;
"Well, you didn't buy the 'Inside Buildings' package, If you want it to work inside, you'll have to pay extra!"
Airwave have said they can and do provide guaranteed in building coverage solutions that forces can buy according to their own operation needs. Please tell me which force are permanently working outside and never go into a building?
In my opinion it sounds to me like they are trying to find another way to stitch the forces up out of more cash!
But that's what the people who supply Airwave say and that's an absolute disgrace! Apparently, according to the Health and Safety Executive the problems are due to the types of contracts signed by the forces when adopting the new system. They decided whether they wanted coverage inside buildings and in particular areas!
Great! They could have told me that when I walked onto a housing estate and the damn thing wouldn't work until I came out! Thank God for mobile phones, as that worked perfectly well!
Airwave still doesn't work on the London Underground! Considering 7/7 was two years ago, you would think that they would have pulled the stops out to get the system working wouldn't you?
Thankfully the newer systems have GPS on board to know where each officer is at any time.
Trick is, will that work in a crisis?
......Out to you.
