LONDON -- telent plc (LSE: TLNT) today announced it has been awarded its first major contract. The former Marconi's UK and German services business that was renamed telent on the sale of Marconi's equipment business to Ericsson will provide a turnkey project for O2 Airwave. The contract, which has a minimum duration of five years, has an estimated value of approximately £36 million.

O2 Airwave, operator of the UK's secure digital communications network for emergency and public safety organisations, announced in October 2005 that it had been awarded a contract by the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) to deliver a National Fallback Service (NFS), which will provide enhanced levels of resilience to the Airwave network. O2 Airwave has awarded telent a sub contract to build the microwave radio backhaul infrastructure for this important national project.

Over the coming 24 months telent will design, build and install a resilient backhaul network using rings of microwave radio circuits, which will replace the existing fixed line links. The contract provides for telent to support the new network for up to ten years.

Used by more than 140,000 officers across every police force in England, Scotland and Wales including the British Transport Police, the Airwave service provides seamless radio coverage across 99% of the country - a massive improvement on the coverage provided by such organisations' legacy networks. Reliable communications plays a vital part in the daily operations of emergency services. Airwave already meets stringent reliability requirements by offering resilient communications and enabling quick recovery in the unlikely event of network outage.

Mark Plato, Managing Director of telent said;

"This is a great start for telent and an endorsement of the strength of our service offering. We supported O2 Airwave in their bid for the Police contract and are delighted to be working with them on a long-term contract. telent is the only UK organisation with the scale, skills and experience to ensure the timely delivery of a complex project of this kind."

Pete Richardson, Managing Director of O2 Airwave said;

"telent impressed us with the speed and quality of its response to this major enhancement of our network. Our objective is to provide a highly resilient service that can be relied upon to provide true interoperability between all organisations involved in public safety and protection should they need to work together in day to day operations or at the scene of major or minor incidents."

telent plc (London: TLNT)