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A controlling position - Frequentis celebrates 60 years
With Frequentis celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Dawn Davison-Read meets up with John Gurney, managing director, Frequentis UK to discover why the company name is synonymous with communication and information systems for the mission critical arena...
With a tremendous heritage for supplying mission critical communications and information systems to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) market for the past 60 years, Frequentis is certainly a market leader with a share of 30% of safety-critical applications. Some 15 years ago, the company embarked on a mission to tackle the public safety sector, and with out doubt it has enjoyed tremendous success in this arena.
The company now extends its range to core business areas such as the air traffic control market, public safety, maritime, defence and public transport. As John Gurney, managing director, Frequentis UK explained, “With such a sound background within the ATC market, public safety was a natural progression for our company.”
“A vast amount of the technology utilised heavily in air traffic control flows naturally into the needs and requirements for public safety - since both areas are deemed mission critical, we have found it relatively easy to adopt our core products and expertise.”
In fact, perhaps one of the most critical elements of Frequentis’ development is that the company addresses the business needs of its customer base and with products that are characterised by the highest fail-safety, rapid connection set-up, as well as flexibility and networking capabilities for different applications, it is perhaps no wonder it has enjoyed some very lucrative, and not to mention, major contracts over the last decade.
“Usability is what makes us different,” adds Gurney. “We focus on the business use of the system, and have designed applications that are flexible enough to meet operation needs and the planned future requirements of our customers.”
Frequentis, has certainly gained a massive understanding of the mission critical arena and over the last few decades has set many standards in ATC. “With this background, we are able to fully understand the immediate requirements of UK emergency services,” adds Gurney. “Combined with the fact that we have delivered three national systems across Europe, our own development, research and manufacturing capabilities coupled with those of our business partners certainly make us a strong contender for many of the up and coming projects.”
Within the UK the Metropolitan Police contract was probably one of the most notable implementations to-date. The ICCS, which was implemented on time and to budget, was commissioned to support the introduction of the MPS’s new Central Communications Command function. Central Communications Command is a long-term solution to the massive growth in demand via 999 calls for policing services. By the end of 2007, the MPS’s 32 Borough based control rooms, the emergency 999 service, telephone operator centres, special events and incident support services will be consolidated into a new service operated out of three buildings across London.
The multi-million pound development, delivery and service contract will run for nine-years.
To optimise the integration of command and communication systems for London Home Office police forces, Frequentis was also commissioned to develop a similar system for the City of London Police.
success breeds success
A further notable contract of Frequentis was recently announced when the Norwegian Authorities signed a contract for the delivery of the new country-wide data- and communications network based on TETRA technology exclusively with Siemens AS, Norway. At the same time Frequentis signed a sub-contract with Siemens
for supplying all the Control Rooms within this project. The roll-out will begin later this year with the first Control Rooms in the Oslo area and run for a couple of years until the last installations up in Svalbard (also known as Spitzbergen).
Frequentis will supply its Integrated Communications Control System (ICCS) for small and medium size Control Rooms based on state-of-the-art technology. The operators of each of the Public Safety Agencies will be able to receive and make calls to and from the telephone network, the existing analogue radio as well as the new TETRA network. It will even be possible to transfer calls or to make conference calls between this three different means of communication. The operator can also for example receive pictures from a mobile phone via MMS, edit them and forward them to the TETRA terminal of the police officer out on the street – all the new and hip types of communications all of us are used to handling in our daily lives will be supported.
Principally there will be in every one of the 27 Police Districts one Fire (110), one Police (112) and one Health (113) Control Room, as well as central training and education centres.
working together
Gurney was quick to point out that the company was well equipped to act as a prime contractor (as in the case of the Met, Lothian & Borders and City of London Police) or in deed as a sub contractor as in the case with North Wales Police. Part of this ability is down to the company’s successful partner programme. Furthermore, the success rate of the company is also down to it pursuing a strategy of adding value to its clients’ initial investment, through the continual development of both innovative and useful solutions.
future developments
The Frequentis vision of what future communication and information systems should hold, stimulates a whole range of company activities, with safety being of paramount importance. Currently the company observes that state-of-the-art operations and communications centres are progressing to a point where they are deploying new technologies that are fully networks. Therefore networking is playing an ever increasing role in both its current and future product portfolio. Furthermore, Frequentis focuses on the specific needs of operators, regardless whether they are air traffic control, dispatchers, the mission is to provide systems that are highly resilient, responsive and intuitive. In fact, next month, at the BAPCO 2007 conference and exhibition, the company will be launching an extremely intuitive application - the Strip Data. Essentially this application is a live data version of ‘incident paper handling’ as known in the public safety sector. Currently utilised in ATC as flight strip data, the information can easily be applied to incident data and concluding, Gurney explained that the company was currently working with a number of police forces to develop the application, thereby ensuring it met both the business needs and integration requirements of the emergency services.
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