New York Terminates M/A-COMM Contract

In a huge blow to radio manufacturer M/A-COMM and the state’s public safety agencies, the New York state Chief Information Officer announced today that she will terminate the $2 billion contract with M/A-COMM to build a state-wide public safety radio network, citing the system’s failure in numerous operational tests. The state issued the termination letter to M/A-COMM with a demand for $50 million, re-payment of money the state had already paid. The system has been controversial during test installations in two counties failed to meet certain technical tests. A recent audit also found administrative problems with the project itself. In today’s announcement, CIO Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart said the latest tests found that M/A-COMM had failed to fix 15 of the 19 deficiencies identified by the state, despite giving the company “every opportunity” to fix the problems. Download (pdf) the state’s termination “exhibit” here, and read a press release here. [more]

In the termination exhibit, the state says that during Nov. 2008 testing it found that 5 of 18 mobile radios, and 8 of 30 portable radios suffered failures. Failure rates for the current state police system are about 1 out of 100, the state noted.

The quality assurance program “reamins deficient,” the state noted, and there are many issues with the vehicular tactical network (V-TAC), which relays mobile transmissions using a system of in-vehicle repeaters. For example, portable radios lost their V-TAC link and couldn’t reconnect, inconsistent transfer from one repeater to another, inconsistent operation of the emergency functions, and audio bursts at the end of transmissions.

The radios are programmed to allow users to push a button to declare an emergency. However, the state notes, the system tests revealed many problems. The tests determined that a user declaring an emergency via radio would clear any other emergency declarations previously made, and “several instances” when pushing the button did not signal an emergency. Radios stayed on the emergency talkgroup, the state learned, and would not revert to the default talkgroup even after the emergency status had been reset. And the “hot mike” feature didn’t work when an emergency was declared, so that dispatchers could not monitor what was occurring at the scene.

The state did say that several deficiencies previously identified had been fixed by M/A-COMM, including problems with system-wide calling and a system test plan.

On the other hand, the state said problems of network availability were “unremediated” after being identified during tests. The state’s report said that during a 3-week testing period, there were 14 hours of outages “due to site connectivity, as well as 24+ hours of gateway outages.

The state wrote that the original contract required “clearly specified” full-duplex operation. However, “Full-duplex mode is a contract requirement and M/A-COM radios provided to date do not support this feature.”

Over-the-air-programming was required by the state’s contract, and works as required. However, “The duration to complete was long and some set-up problems were encountered,” the state said. M/A-COMM recently told New York officials that some applications can’t be loaded over-the-air, but rather only by direct cable connection. Portable radios took 3 hours to upgrade, the state said, while mobile radios took one hour.

Lastly, the state noted that tower hazard lighting was lacking, and had not been remediated.