In action


signed it with Marconi at the time was still in the company, so we sat down with him for a little while and just confi rmed what the thought-process was then. “Wales, we weren’t so sure about, because


the people who had been involved had done it more as a turnkey project with Marconi at the time and we couldn’t fi nd anybody who could remember what the design parameters were! So we went from half-knowing to reconfi rm- ing that design with the guys at Team Simoco’s help. So we were comfortable that the 103 sites would give us good coverage – which it does.


“And here [the Midlands] we are starting


from scratch because we don’t know what they had before. We haven’t got a clue! Half the sites have gone.”


Keypad roaming T e proposed network is likely to cover a sim- ilar-sized area and so another 100 or so sites will probably be needed. But the company does not plan to fully integrate the new system with its existing network. “T e users will be able to use the other net-


work”, Kevan explains. “So if, for example, there is a storm somewhere and we wanted to lend 50 linesmen from the South West to come up and work in the East Midlands, then they could come and they could use the new radio system. But what we’re not planning to do is to route all the calls throughout the whole system. So when they come across the border, they will just have to tap in a few keys on the keypad to change the network. “T e mobiles that we use are able to work


on more than one network anyway. T at’s essentially what we did when we transferred from the old network to the newer network that we had, was to have a period when they swapped over from Network 1 to Network 2, so to speak. And that’s the plan. “It’s because we don’t want to put all our


eggs in one basket, if you like. If we keep it as two separate entities, then it works nicely like we’ve got it now so we don’t want to scale it up too much and cause any problems.”


Team Simoco engineers at the Sulis Manor radio mast near Bath, Somerset


Aggressive upgrade In Wales and the South West, the Marconi equipment was replaced completely by Team Simoco in 2007. “We fi tted 1600 – therea- bouts – mobiles in vehicles”, Kevan continues. “I think it was 30 a day, or something like that, which was a pretty aggressive programme. We had lots of locations going. One of the places at Exeter, for instance, was just a big store area, like a warehouse, just empty. We would wheel them in and fi t the mobiles. “In the spring of 2008, then, we rolled out


the Xfi ns themselves into the 103 sites, which took us 23 days, by recollection, because we had 23 cells and we did 23 days of work. “T e need to roll out fairly quickly was be-


cause whatever time of the year you do that, you have got the risk that there is going to be a storm coming or some major incident that’s going to really mess you about. So we just de- cided to go for it. I think we worked seven days a week for a few weeks.” Andy adds that Simoco had tested the mo-


A radio tower in the South West in Western Power Distribution’s network


LAND mobile September 2012


biles beforehand to check they would work seamlessly on the existing network to make the changeover run smoothly. “I think we did a few software changes to the mobile to achieve


that, so we did that pre-work and then that al- lowed us to do all the vehicle fi ts. And the guys that were using the system operationally didn’t see any diff erence when they had their new piece fi tted. T at’s the bit the guys see. T ey don’t see any of the 103 sites, they don’t see all the clever bits behind the scenes. “From that point, I guess, some of the us-


ers thought the new network was there, just by virtue of the fact they’d got a new radio in there when in fact it was 5–6 months between that happening and doing the rollout. “Kevan’s team co-ordinated that disruption


to the users and communicated very well. T e users did know they would lose coverage for a few hours and in some cases it was just a few hours between a cell going down, us screwing


WPD and Surf Telecoms


Kevan Scott, manager at Surf Telecoms, which supplies internal communications for Western Power Distribution.


R


adio systems for Western Power Distri- bution are supplied by Surf Telecoms,


a sister company within the group. “Surf Telecoms stood in the past for Sites, Utilities, Radio and Fibre”, Kevan Scott explains. The company’s swirl logo he adds, evokes the surf beaches of Newquay and Bude in WPD’s original homeland in the South West. “Our role is to look after the internal


communications of the electricity business but also to look for external opportunities to make unregulated income – selling our wares to lots of other providers. We provide circuits for Airwave, for the universities, for Sky, for Virgin Media, for Cable & Wireless and all sorts of people who have got their own networks but use parts of our network to extend into places where they have chosen not to be.”


17


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