As well as providing the network, Airwave was responsible for providing all the kit for LOCOG. That amounted to about 50 000 different items, a significant proportion of which were hired. This equipment included 17 000 handheld terminals, installations in buses, fixed mobile installations specifically at venues, headsets, batteries and items specifically for disabled users during the Paralympics.

This provided the company with a problem unique to the Olympics. Martin explains: “Our network provider is Motorola, all the terminals are Motorola. Unfortunately, Samsung are the official provider of communications equipment to the Games.”

“Everything we used had to be de-branded. It sounds simple, but it was actually quite a lot of work. You take off the cover for the battery, the battery has Motorola on it and has to be removed, the belt clip has got Motorola on it. It was a bit of an extra headache for us.”

Network performance

Airwave dedicated its control centre in Hemel Hempstead, just north of London, to the running of its Olympic operations. The rest of the network was covered at its premises in Rugby in the heart of the country during the Games. Martin cheerfully points out that no significant problems occurred on the network during this time. “We had no major service outages. One of the benefits during the Olympics was there was a total freeze on everything – we shut down all unnecessary changes on the network and our suppliers shut down all unnecessary changes.”

Another challenge to overcome was the fix times that LOCOG insisted upon. Martin solved this problem by stationing an engineer at each site 24 hours a day for the duration of the Games. There were 17 sites in London as well as 18 sites around the country that needed to be manned when a venue was active.

“We took engineers from around the business, people who normally do reference system testing, people who do planning, and we said we’re going to let you touch the real network now. So we trained them up, we put them out there. I spent some time going around seeing them. They were all bored, but happy. Happy to be bored!”

Airwave’s main suppliers also proved very helpful during this period. Cable & Wireless, Motorola and Reidel, which helped with terminal management, all provided someone to give support at the Hemel Hempstead headquarters. Martin was very happy with how this worked out: “We had people sitting in the LOCOG technical operations centre, providing cover so we were in direct control of any issues. We didn’t have any major service issues. We didn’t have any coverage or capacity issues.”

Record traffic

The opening ceremony on July 27 saw over 2·7 million calls on the network from the police alone, a record for a single day. Another milestone came on August 1 when 85 500 people used the network. The Apollo network was also very busy with 750 000 calls on July 29.

“The Met [London’s Metropolitan Police] had help from 35 different police forces from around the country, 16 500 officers came to London to support the Met during the Olympics”, Martin continues. 

“We played our role in that as well. The Met created three muster, briefing and distribution centres, where people would come in, they’d get briefed, and deployed. In between times they’d get fed. 

“We had people sitting in those centres making sure everyone was happy with the use of the Airwave terminal, because some of these forces coming in weren’t used to using Motorola terminals.”

Overall, Martin and his operations team at Airwave can look back on a job well done. “We’ve had some great feedback from our ‘blue light’ customers. The Olympic Security Directorate, who commissioned us to enhance the ‘blue-light’ project, told us this was the best project they had ever managed. 

“We’re still waiting for our letter of commendation from LOCOG, but I’m told it’s on the way.”

The Airwave network

With 300 000 users, the Airwave network is currently the world’s largest TETRA network, accounting for 10 per cent of the global TETRA user base. It was built between 2000 and 2005, originally to cater for the police forces of England, Scotland and Wales. Subsequently, UK fire and ambulance services have joined and other customers include the Highways Agency, HMRC as well as the MoD police force, the RAF and the Royal Navy.

John Lewis, chief operating officer at Airwave, comments: “We have two network operation centres and we run them both live. The one in Rugby runs the Midlands and the North and the one in Hemel Hempstead runs London and the South. They can run everything in either place if necessary. We also have a dark site in case either one of those disappears.”
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