Written evidence from Airwaves
I am writing with regard to the comments made to your Committee by Government Chief Technology Officer Liam Maxwell on 29 October 2014. I was disappointed to see his factually inaccurate comments regarding Airwave which, as Chief Executive Officer of the company, I would like to correct.
“The Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme... costs about £450m to provide... to the police...”
Airwave is delivering a bespoke voice and data network for all of the emergency services, not just police, which meets a demanding specification: it is secure, resilient and covers, geographically, over 99 per cent of Great Britain. The annual cost for Police, Fire and Ambulance is £344m (ex VAT). The annual cost today reflects not only the bespoke nature of the service, providing high levels of availability and coverage not available on any commercial mobile network, but also the fact that the original cost of investment in the network build has been spread over the life of the contract. Overall our investment will make an 8% return over the contract term of c18 years from its starting date in 2000.
Since 2011, Airwave has been working with government to deliver collaborative cost savings, with £22.6m delivered to date and we have further offers with government that will enable them to make even more savings.
Mr Maxwell has made an apples and oranges comparison with the mobile network operators whose geographic coverage is often less than 80 per cent and who have very little resilience. Those networks have access to millions of potential users rather than Airwave’s which is restricted to a select small user community in the low hundreds of thousands. When you bear in mind that every six minutes a police officer, paramedic or fire fighter presses the emergency button on their radio to summon urgent assistance it is clear that coverage and availability at all times is essential – it can be the difference between life and death.
“...which is currently a 2G contract run by a company called Airwave...”
Airwave provides voice and data communication over a TETRA mobile network, a different and distinct technology from that generally described as 2G used on commercial networks. TETRA is, and remains, the technology of choice for critical communications in many parts of the world due to the lack of proven alternatives. For example, TETRA networks are being renewed in Poland, rolled out across Germany, in the US and elsewhere. All these countries have seen what can be done in Britain and are wanting similar for their own emergency and public safety services.
“...something that you could do right now for about £70m a year... ...we are replacing that with...the emergency services mobile communications service, which we split up into four lots. Lot 3....is about delivery of the telecommunications services into the police, and it will be bought in a series of components, but those components will add up to more than £100m”
£70m could currently buy you mobile phone access to 2G and 3G networks, but this would not provide the emergency services with the capabilities that they demand and would suffer from very bare and low specification with little resilience and limited coverage. To build from scratch a TETRA network of the same specification as Airwave’s current network would cost £2.4billion (£1.5b capex, £0.9b finance, plus then over £100m to operate each year). Furthermore, the ESMCP (the procurement seeking to replace the Airwave service) OJEU total value of lot 1-4 is over £1.2bn and is for all emergency services, not just the police. Even without adding the additional lots covering Air to Ground, London Underground etc this is significantly greater than £70m per annum.
“...have an award that pragmatically addresses our desire to move away from a ruinous contract on old technology...”
In terms of technology, Airwave does not provide a “2G radio service to the police” nor has it been “a ruinous contract on old technology” that denies the police and emergency services the ability to exchange data and voice. As the Committee already knows (and Richard Bacon MP pointed out a few minutes after this comment) Airwave’s PFI was set up in 2000 and while there were caveats expressed in the PAC report at the time, the project since then has been very successful.
All the police forces in England, Scotland and Wales were using Airwave’s service by 2005, all Ambulance Trusts also joined in 2005 and all Fire and Rescue Services in 2006. After the Civil Contingencies Act in 2004 delineated the Category 1 and Category 2 Responder communities, most Category 2 responders (public safety organisations) now use our service. They rely on it to communicate not just in their normal operations, but also in times of significant adversity such as major disasters, severe weather, flooding and power failure when other communications networks fail.
With regards to the cost of this service, prior to the letting of the contract in 2000, it was recognised that expenditure on police mobile communications would need to more than double if the service were to have a fit for purpose capability that exceeded that available at the time to many criminals. The nature of upfront investment required to deliver this level of infrastructure meant that a longer term contract was the most viable option at that time.
We have been subject to various independent audits from the National Audit Office, the Office of Government Commerce and most recently Gartner, all of which concluded that we were delivering value for money relative to the significant capital cost of the network and the services provided.
“...to a new contract that allows the police and emergency services to exchange data and voice...”
The police and emergency services already exchange data and voice and have always been able to over TETRA. Our mobile data solution has been implemented in more than a quarter of police forces, enabling savings of up to £2m per force per year.
Airwave remains committed to providing a service that is dedicated to our nation’s emergency responders. We continue to work closely with them to adapt to their changing needs and to introduce new technologies that help meet their challenges in this time of increased threats of terror and national emergencies. I appreciate having the opportunity to set out more accurate facts from this part of your enquiry.