Giving this to non-NATS airports carries a risk of destabilising NAS (it can be a bit vulnerable to data which is not put in in exactly the right format and you don't know it's wrong until NAS falls over and everyone gets asked to stay on the ground!) by personnel who are not trained by or accountable to NATS. It's like giving your internet password to a neighbour and asking them to take care with your logins!!
While I can see what your saying there, I work at a NATS regional airport unit with a NAS link. However our NAS link is recieve only. We recieve strips with the code printed on and it also updates our local code callsign conversion database for the radar. However, if anything needs changing or querying regarding sqauwks and/or NAS data we have to get on the phone to Swanwick, we have no means to do anything with NAS other than recieve.
Maybe I am misunderstanding here, but if NATS can install this recieve only link at its own airfields why can't it do so for non-NATS units? I agree with the original poster, we spend a lot of time passing squawks over the phone to other airfields (maybe we at at the opposite ends of the same phoneline?!) and operationally it would be much better if they could have a direct link.
I suspect as suggested above, it comes down to NATS and £££.
