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I
t’s sometimes difficult to imagine the old days of trying to run a business without the invaluable aid of a mobile phone. Now it has become part of the entrepreneur’s essential kit – you need to be available to customers at all times of the day, chasing suppliers and making sure plant and materials are delivered to site on time. Mobile phones are ubiquitous, but not every mobile is necessarily up to the job when it comes to withstanding the rigours of day-to-day electrical work, particularly in the building site environment. There’s a lot to be said about having the right tool for the job. And depending on the type of job the choice of equipment will change considerably. What is clear is that different situations require different tools to achieve the desired result, and mobile communications are no different. Effective and reliable communications are central to getting the job done, any job. You’d choose a Transit over a TVR as a commercial vehicle, but that smartphone mini-computer in your pocket is probably more at home in a suit than on a site.
Strong case
That’s why JCB created the Toughphone range, to provide effective mobile communications for the harshest of environments. Tested to destruction, JCB Toughphones are built to withstand dust, water, extremes of temperature
and more than the occasional knock. Ranging from the Tradesman, which is the world’s first floating phone, up to the Pro-Smart Android smartphone, the JCB Toughphone range has been setting the standard in rugged mobiles for more than five years. The story goes back to 2007 and Peter Jones’ (of Dragons’
The JCB Toughphone range has
been designed to perform in conditions where most mobile devices would fail
Den fame) mobile phone distribution company, Data Select. It had spotted a gap in the market for rugged mobile phones, which customers were demanding but mainstream manufacturers were not producing. Teaming up with JCB, the first Toughphone was launched in 2008. The phone had a simple philosophy: be tough enough to survive in every situation. With a national PR launch featuring Peter Jones, the JCB Toughphone was available from Phones 4u,
Play.com and various retailers. It went on to sell nearly 100,000 units in the UK.
In 2010, the range was updated to include the Tradesman, Sitemaster (a phone capable of withstanding a JCB running over it) and the Pro-Talk (with built-in two-way radio). These devices were stocked in Carphone Warehouse in the UK and sold across a further 20 countries worldwide. Fast forward to 2012, and the stand-out handsets in the JCB Toughphone range are the Sitemaster 2, which is tested to IP67 (fully water- and dust-proof), has a two-megapixel camera built
September 2012 ECA Today 27
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