HULL, U.K. -- Affiniti, the communications integrator created from Kingston Communications Business Services, Omnetica and Technica, today announces it has secured a two-part contract with Thames Valley Police (TVP) for the novation of its existing communications infrastructure and management of its voice and data systems for a 5 year term at a total value of £10m.

TVP’s procurement process was assisted by Improcom, an independent IT and telecommunications consultancy.

Simon Chandler, Communications and Infrastructure Manager from TVP, said: “The effective management of Thames Valley Police’s communications infrastructure is vital to the Force, with over 7,700 officers and staff using the telephone and computer networks. We are currently running one of the best voice and data networks within the police service with considerable development possibilities available in the future to use the technology to improve our policing service.

The savings made by using Affiniti mean we can further invest to improve our service and we can also be confident that the partnership will ensure that our networks run smoothly across the Force, providing the performance for officers and staff to operate effectively.”

The first stage of the project involved novation of the existing BT circuits to Affiniti which has provided Thames Valley Police with immediate rental savings, whilst giving Affiniti the visibility and control to provide monitoring, fault fix and change capabilities for both the circuits and the equipment in the network.

In the second stage Affiniti will manage the entire communications infrastructure for the contract term of 5 years. During this time Affiniti will work in partnership with Thames Valley Police to evolve and develop their communications infrastructure and the managed service so that they continue to meet the demands of modern policing for voice, data and video communications. As part of this, Affiniti will look to increase the efficiency and reduce costs of the voice network through its life cycle management services.

Affiniti will provide TVP with a 1-hour response Service Level Agreement (SLA) to the Force’s 14 core sites. In order to facilitate the smooth running of such an operation, Affiniti will use a combination of onsite and offsite engineers to provide 24-hour support to assist in the utility of the processes as they are in place.

Gary Young, Managing Director of Affiniti commented: “This contract further confirms Affiniti’s success within the emergency services sector with nearly 40 per cent of the UK’s police forces now relying on us to supply and manage their communications infrastructure. Our breadth of experience and understanding of the business challenges they face will now help Thames Valley Police, as one of the largest non-metropolitan police forces in the country.”

Kingston Communications plc