M/A-Com wins Navy mobile radio network deal

M/A-Com has won a contract to construct a land mobile radio network that will let the military and local jurisdictions in four states communicate with each other through a single network for the first time.

Under the $4.7 million contract, M/A-Com of Lowell, Mass., will design, build and implement the network. The contract contains provisions for future maintenance and training. The Army's assistant project manager, land mobile radio office awarded the deal on behalf of the Navy.

The project, known as the Joint National Capital Region Land Mobile Radio Phase II system, will give the Naval District Washington a new land mobile radio communications network, based on M/A-Com's P25 Trunked Internet Protocol Communications System.

The system is one of the first Defense Department land mobile radio deployments in the United States to simultaneously serve the Army, Navy and Air Force, the company said.

The system will offer base radio communications for thousands of Defense Department users, as well as facilitate interoperable communications with civilian agencies in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. These agencies currently communicate on different frequencies and have disparate radio systems throughout the Joint National Capital Region and Naval District Washington region.

M/A-Com is a unit of Tyco Electronics, which is a business segment of Tyco International Ltd. of Princeton, N.J. The parent company has more than 260,000 employees and annual sales of $40 billion.