A communications engineer who works for the transit division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said this week that a fix for the problems, involving the use of new digital signal processing technology, is on the way and should start being rolled out later this year.

But the cost of the fix is estimated by transit officials at $20 million, and the matter of who foots the extra bill is still up in the air.

For now, the New York City Police Department is refusing to use the new network because of concerns that the safety of the public or NYPD officers might be threatened as a result of the distortion that occurs when an officer carrying one of the radios goes from street level into the subway, or the reverse.

"It's a very vexing technical issue," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in an e-mail response to questions that was sent to Computerworld by an NYPD spokesman. "People of goodwill are working on it both at the MTA and here. We want to make certain that the radio fully functions both below ground and aboveground."

Because of the complexity of the subway system and the city's topography, "it is extremely difficult to have a radio system that could work in both environments," Kelly said. But he added that NYPD and MTA officials are continuing to talk about ways to resolve the signal distortion problems. "We're trying to work it out on both ends," he said.