New York State Said to Be Close to Dropping Police Radio Project

New York state officials are close to canceling a $2 billion contract to build a statewide wireless network for emergency agencies after critical tests on the network failed late last year. Lawyers for the vendor, M/A-COM, a subsidiary of Tyco Electronics, sent the state a letter on Friday threatening to sue if officials follow through on their plan to shut down the project, which was intended to improve radio communications throughout the state, but particularly in remote areas where police agencies have trouble talking to one another. State officials, though, were said to be determined to shut down the project because it was unclear, after a pilot program in two counties and nearly $52 million in expenditures, that M/A-COM's system would ever work as expected. A major problem has been the difficulty and unanticipated cost of installing radio towers in remote, mountainous areas, according to the officials and technical experts, who spoke anonymously because the contract dispute is at a delicate juncture. To finish the project, state officials decided that considerably more money would have to be spent at a time when the state is expected to have large budget deficits. At the same time, the state cannot embark on a new network project, no matter what the cost, until it untangles itself from its current contract, one state official said.