July/Aug 2005

In a contract valued at around £390 million over 13 years, Ambulance Trusts in England has signed up to O2 Airwave system to provide a communications network for ambulances, paramedics and similar users.

O2 Airwave is the new national digital communications network developed specifically for users such as emergency services. It is based on the TETRA standard, which was also used by the Dolphin network until its demise last year, and is said to be notable for its clear voice quality and reliability. Airwave has already been rolled out to the 51 police force regions in England, Scotland and Wales.

Under the new contract, O2 Airwave and SunGard Vivista will provide a range of products and services, supplying radio terminals for paramedics and ambulance staff. They will also provide integrated communications control systems for all despatch centres.

Vivista, formerly incorporating the mobile communications infrastructure division of Securicor, was acquired recently by US-based SunGuard, and is a premier supplier of Airwave services.

Because Airwave works to common standards, it is expected to enable control centres and ambulance crews at the scenes of incidents to communicate much more easily with police using the same system.

Features of the system will include status messaging, alert paging, resource/incident location and mobilisation messaging. The network will feed details to emergency vehicles such as location coordinates, details about the patient, nature of the incident and other free text information.

The Scottish Ambulance Service and the Welsh Ambulance Service Trust are scheduled to make a decision on the choice of their next communications system in the near future. O2 Airwave is already shortlisted for a new fire service national contract.

In addition to the emergency services, Airwave is available to over 120 organisations having some form of public safety role. It is already being used by the MOD, the Highways Agency and several county councils.