screwed from the start?

"Fulfilment of this contract will mean we have to bring to life a number of innovations, both from a technological and a network management point of view."

Is it only me that reads that as 'We've got the contract and have no idea how to implement it' ?

Good to see how our money is to be spent on a system that is yet to be developed by a company who are not sure what they need to develop and , most likely, paid for by a client who also has no idea what they are after.

Oh, hang on, sounds like Boris has been reading promotional leaflets again and has had another 'Big Idea'.

Contractor heaven

Well, look at it this way: If they're not laying on thick with the security circus, that probably wasn't necessairy in the first place (we already know it wasn't, exploding water my foot), meaning they lose face (what little they have left), so it's best to sing the party line like a little good canary.

And yes, the contractors are understandably happy to prolong the problem as much as possible citing ``technical difficulties'', except that there's a hard deadline of the actual olympics missing which would lose them lots of face unless they have some blackmail on the relevant bigwigs.

Realistically, though, airwave will have a certain capacity and it might very well not be enough for a city full of nervous plod, and if there's anyone with half-a-clue in the planning fray they'll have noticed the rather massive fail that is C2000 and its miserable underperformance in a large emergency services excercise in the Netherlands. So, amazingly, there are good solid reasons to at least look critically at the system and upgrade it a bit well before the capacity is actually needed.