THE company responsible for the police radio system which failed during the English Defence League protest in Blackburn said a faulty antenna caused the problem.
Officers policing almost 2,000 demonstrators had to rely on mobile phones after their Airwave communication system stopped working. at the height of the EDL demonstration on April 2.
An Airwave spokesman said: “At approximately 1.30pm on Saturday, April 2, the Airwave Network Management Centre (NMC) received a call from Lancashire Constabulary to report that they were experiencing some service disruption in the Blackburn area.
“Airwave’s NMC despatched an engineer to the site, who quickly identified a faulty antenna as the root cause of the problem.
“Police officers in Blackburn experienced some disruption of communications during this time.
“At no time were control room communications lost, and the Airwave service remained stable for the rest of the Lancashire Constabulary area..
“The emergency services experienced no significant problems, and had minimal impact on policing of the day’s events.
“Airwave takes all of its network issues extremely seriously and our network management team were quick to work closely with our customers in the Lancashire Constabulary throughout.”
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