The Wimbledon Tournament doesn’t just appeal to tennis fans, this major global event attracts the attention of sports enthusiasts across the world. For just a short time every summer, all eyes are fixed on this prestigious event.
But when the professional spotlights of this exclusive tournament are no longer on, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) work tirelessly all year round and continues to operate as an exclusive members' tennis club.
To support future growth and to meet the evolving demands of members, visitors, staff and world champion tennis players the AELTC turned to us to design and implement an improved, scalable and flexible multi-site communications system.
Known for its high quality, attention to detail and seamless operations, the AELTC insists that all key personnel have access to flawless, crystal clear, secure, instant communications. And it’s not just the umpires, ball boys, coaches and players who need to be in the right place at the right time, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes too.
Hospitality personnel, gym staff, onsite retailers, maintenance staff, security professionals, gardeners, photographers, cleaners, groundstaff plus a whole host more must have the ability to receive and transmit reliable communications 100% of the time. Faultless communications is crucial.
The infrastructure that we have put in place supports this extra capacity, resulting in the AELTC experiencing no disruption to their service. Plus, we provide all additional handsets on a managed basis which is not only cost effective but delivers extra peace of mind.
It’s imperative that all visitors and spectators experience something special. The grounds must be impeccable, the lawns must be luscious, and they must feel safe.
During the Wimbledon Fortnite a fleet of over 300 chauffeurs are used to provide VIP transport for players, important guests, and key supporting staff from across London. It is essential that the logistics of this is managed efficiently by on-site ALTEC staff. However, to go several kilometers or hundreds of kilometers away from the core two-way radio network would mean compromised communications. To overcome this, we have seamlessly integrated a secure Broadband Push-to-Talk application.
Wave PTX from Motorola Solutions, integrates perfectly with the existing Capacity-Max system, providing seamless talk-group connectivity for voice and data, providing the same critical functionality off-site, with access to both site-specific Wi-Fi and the commercial cellular networks.
This ensures that the AELTC have complete control over their sites and have the ability to activate processes such as their all-important irrigation system.
To keep all personnel safe, the fire system has been integrated to the communications solution. Not only will this alert key personnel to take immediate action, but they can also access visual accounts for full situation awareness.
And as the solution is fully scalable, the AELTC is now looking to deploy further features such as GPS tracking and lone worker to boost their existing superior health and safety functions.
As part of the update, the AELTC needed two of their remote sites, Roehampton and Raynes Park, to be connected to the network.
The business-critical technology is hosted on a VM environment and powered by DAS’s fibre enhancers to make sure that communications remain faultless in the event of any outage and allows the client to benefit from a flawless multi-site system.
Both Roehampton and Raynes Park operate as stand-alone networks. Should in the rare event that the linkbacks to the main radio site at Church Road, Wimbledon fail, they can continue to operate.
The work that goes into developing and overseeing a project like this is immense. It takes a lot of time, research, skill, knowledge and testing to deliver the ultimate solution.
It is always our aim and mission to provide systems that are flexible and will meet the needs of our clients for years to come. We are dedicated not just to maintain, but to strengthen, all of our customer relationships.
To futureproof this project, we created a solution that can cope with extra capacity and remain flawless across multiple sites. We also predict, along with the AELTC, what their future needs will be. We believe that simply ‘adding on’ never works. Communications solutions should have built-in extra capacity which saves time and money in the long term.
All Images courtesy of Wimbledon Images. Copyright belongs with the originator. No ownership is implied.
Servicom strives to identify the ultimate solutions that address the challenges faced by organisations that rely on high value controlled items such as two-way radio equipment. This faultless dedication enables our clients to continually optimise the power of their most valuable assets and overcome some of the limited capabilities of transmission protocols.
CiCO, is the latest in the line of innovation developed by Servicom’s in-house team to help organisations work smarter, not harder.
Lost and damaged devices are a huge problem. Without a robust solution in place for checking in and checking out, many organisations experience disruptive volumes of missing items every week. Specifically, the loss of hand-held radios has a detrimental effect on businesses.
With the revolutionary system they have reduced their losses to virtually zero and significantly reduced the need for device repairs. Not only does our solution offer comprehensive traceability, but it also reinforces accountability and a sense of ownership among all employees for the equipment they’re issued.
Start each shift on the right foot with a fast and efficient asset collection process.
After a busy shift, the user must return their devices to be recharged ensuring readiness for the next shift.
With CiCO, third-party contractors issued with any item must return it before leaving your site. Any devices that aren’t returned can be fully traceable and recalled.
With a clear record of who is in possession of every item, you can easily track usage and identify issues before they become a problem.
Any radios not returned, or reported as lost or damaged, will be immediately removed from the network to make sure all your communications are only ever received by the intended recipient.
The Check In and Check Out solution can be adapted to inject even more accountability to a range of issued assets such as radios, access keys, portables scanners, and body-worn devices including cameras.
The CiCO system can be adapted for virtually any sector including logistics, manufacturing, defence, civil engineering, retail and hospitality, energy, and utilities.
In today’s fast-paced business world, equipping employees with the right tools is essential for success. Two-way radios are no longer just a basic communication device, they are an essential part of an employee’s PPE. These devices offer a wide range of features that go beyond simple voice calls, including location tracking, lone-worker and man-down features, messaging services, job ticketing, and life-saving emergency response capabilities.
Devices / assets are checked in and out quickly and automatically using unique device barcodes or RFID tags. Every device is paired to its user’s unique ID card or RFID tag.
Devices can also be paired with fixed checking in and out stations. Ideal for when there is more than one Check In and Check Out area. This solution will ensure that employees pick up and return devices to their designated area.
A secure portal is provided with different access levels for administrators and users. At administration level, the manager can view a real-time dashboard that dynamically shows the allocation and usage of all items and allows them to accurately manage and allocate the right amount of asset resources every day.
Radios will be switched on and off and registered on the radio network in accordance with your policies. Lost devices will be barred and removed from service. This robust security measure prevents all missing devices from accessing your radio network to prevent unwanted eavesdropping and the monitoring of sensitive traffic.
Intelligent management of devices will be embedded in accordance with the user’s pre-determined rights. For example, maintenance personnel would not be authorised to collect a radio from the security team group.
Radios will be permanently paired to an individual based on their user ID. This can be customised so that certain individuals can carry additional radios allowing them to fulfil their particular role. Fine-grain parameters can be setup. To explain let’s look at an example that involves an eight hour shift. If the radio is not returned on time the radio will be automatically removed from your network service.
Emergency situations can be escalated to include all radios. For example, radios that are off duty will automatically be activated in the event of a fire alarm.
Portugal hosted the final rounds of the Formula 2 World Championship this September. Once again, our talented team of engineers had equipped Mette Bjerknæs and her crew from JRM Racing with the ultimate cutting edge communications solution.
This special project pushes the innovation and creativity of the Servicom team to give Mette the winning edge. These nail-bitingly tense powerboat championships test physical limits, mindsets, and technology to the max.
Even though this year’s races have come to an end, the behind-the-scenes work continues. The messages that we receive from Mette are always written with such sincerity and reading comments like this one which she sent after she completed the final round really spurs us on to pull out all the stops! "I want to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help and support this season. I am beyond grateful and I hope our partnership can continue in the seasons to come! I am confident that I will reach that podium with your support."
After considerable troubleshooting her powerboat was ready to compete again. She made it to the start line of the final race at Vila Velha de Rodao but didn’t get the opportunity to test the changes made to the boat.
Despite all of these challenges, her competitive spirit or resilience didn’t waver and we’re proud to announce that she achieved 5th place in the final race of the 2022 season just one position from taking a place on the podium. What a comeback! Plus if it wasn’t for a competitor missing a turn buoy and colliding with Mett’s powerboat she should have been awarded 4th place. But as ever, her positive nature shone through making her even more determined to take on 2023 with complete courage!
This is how Mette responded to the result, “I can honestly say I have never been more motivated to start a new season than I am now and I believe 2023 will be my year! Having said that, I would never be able to do any of this without your help.”
The speed of the powerboat, the twists and turns of the exhilarating courses, the roar of the engine and the spray of the water certainly throw up a lot of challenges for our engineers.
To ensure crystal-clear, real time communications remain flawless between Mette and her crew, our engineers designed a custom two-way communications system utilising the power of the Motorola DP4600e radios for the land-based team and a Motorola DM4400e housed in the boats’ bulkhead. Mette’s helmet has a hard-wired, noise-cancelling microphoned fitted for maximum clarity and efficiency.
Reflecting on what we’ve achieved, we realise that we’ve actually delivered hundreds of thousands of two-way radios to most sectors.
Our “Trunking system” roots were firmly established way back before anyone had even considered “two times-slots”, or before anyone really took the digital revolution seriously. Back in the 1980s the most cost effective, and the best you could get, at the time was a trunking radio standard called a MPT1327. MPT stands for ‘Ministry of Post and Telecoms’, it even sounds old just saying it and very reminiscent of telephone operators and switch boards.
Looking back to the early years, many of our customers still had high-capacity requirements, demanding multi-site radio systems able to support hundreds of subscriber radios with resource queueing and simulations operation with reliability. We got to cut our teeth early on. Way back, analogue was the only flavour available, good trunked radio did exist, it was robust and a popular choice for bigger systems. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, radios from Motorola coupled with trunking infrastructure from manufacturers such as Fylde Microsystems boasted some of the biggest single radio systems in the world with hundreds of sites.
As with most revolutions in two-way radio since the 40s, Motorola have always been out there at the forefront of technology. Today this is still the case – the MOTOTRBO Capacity Max systems based on Digital Mobile Radio ‘DMR’ technology is the very best on the market. It’s reliable, feature rich and future proof. ‘Future proof’ is often a term used flippantly, but from our real-world experience working in partnership with Motorola we know this to be true.
We would encourage you to go and read what Motorola say about their system, and to make it easy for you to find this information, here is the link. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_xu/products/mototrbo/mototrbo-capacity-max.html#taboverview
From our perspective as an integrator, we have a deeper understanding of what all this means and more importantly what it means to our end customer. Our customers rely on us, and they trust us. Their operations depend on excellent communication for the efficient and safe running of their operation. So, our pride is in deploying a system that delivers this exactly so they can concentrate on, and achieve, their mission.
Spirits were high anyway as this was the first physical conference since 2019! It was really exciting for the team to be in a space filled with the talented people that make the world of communications go round.
Discovering the latest tech and thinking about future possibilities was amazing enough, but to receive an award on top of that really was the icing on an already world-class cake (you know, the type Mary Berry makes!).
The award was for one of Servicom’s most exciting projects. It really was a team effort, and everyone played a role in it. The project involved the engineers deploying the biggest ‘sold’ Motorola Solutions Capacity Max system in the whole of the UK! They worked across 6 sites and the system that they developed consists of over a thousand radios.
Our greatest strength is to go beyond voice communications, to be by your side every step of the way. For over 30 years our expertise has empowered personnel to reach their full potential, enabled organisations to grow, kept communities safe and protected assets.
