How Servicom makes sure the All England Lawn Tennis Club is Always Ready

When The Championships begin, the pressure is already on. The All England Lawn Tennis Club is running a live operation across Church Road, Roehampton and Raynes Park, with security, grounds, maintenance, tours and control room teams all moving at once. Calls have to land first time. Coverage has to hold up in the awkward places. Control room teams need a clear read of what is happening and who needs to act.

That was the brief Servicom was asked to solve. Build a communications platform that supports the day job across all three sites, scales for the annual surge of The Championships, and gives the club the resilience and visibility to stay in control when the estate is at full stretch.

The challenge

The club’s previous Capacity Plus system had reached the point where more was needed. The AELTC wanted greater capacity during The Championships, while keeping the reliability and security it already trusted. It also needed a more flexible multi-site design that could scale with the event and the wider estate. The target was clear: secure communications and a 100% successful first-time call rate.

The scale of that requirement is easy to underestimate. On a normal day, the estate uses around 200 radios across more than 40 talk groups. During The Championships, that expands by 1,200 or more additional radios and more than 60 extra talk groups, with user permissions and fleet maps changing to match the event. The infrastructure had to absorb that spike without being rebuilt each summer.

The physical estate raised the bar further. Coverage had to stay strong in underground and high-interference areas. The club also needed tighter control room workflows, stronger resilience and a system that could keep operating locally at remote sites if a link back to Church Road failed.

The solution

Servicom designed and delivered a MOTOTRBO Capacity Max platform across all three sites. At Church Road, it installed 12 repeaters delivering 23 simultaneous call paths and a dedicated control channel. Roehampton received 4 repeaters and Raynes Park 3, giving the estate the capacity to handle normal operations and tournament-time demand across the full site footprint.

Resilience was built in from the start. Servicom installed a hot standby duplicate system with a further 12 repeaters at a secondary location, backed by automated power protection. The redundant system servers are geographically isolated and designed to fail over automatically if part of the live environment drops. Roehampton and Raynes Park can also continue operating as stand-alone networks if either link back to Church Road goes down.

Coverage was engineered to match the estate, not a paper plan. Servicom deployed an extended optical distributed antenna system with dual optic feeds for underground and high-interference areas. The enhancers are dual fed from the main and duplicate systems, so coverage remains in place if the standby environment becomes active. Remote monitoring, over-the-air programming and remote configuration changes give the team a faster way to support the system and keep it tuned inside agreed service levels.

The software layer is a core part of the platform. Controllers can monitor communications centrally, merge talk groups, route calls to the right user groups, record calls and work from built-in reporting. Fire alerts are integrated into the workflow through two manned dispatcher consoles in the Central Control Room, plus a third failover console in a backup control room. Bespoke Servicom software and the wider Radio Management environment add network analysis and system visibility, so the club has a clearer picture of usage, demand and performance over time.

Around The Championships, Servicom supplies additional radios on a managed service basis, trains new users and supports the estate 24/7. The result is a platform built for the event before the event arrives.

At a glance / key proof points

• Three-site Capacity Max deployment across Church Road, Roehampton and Raynes Park.
• 12 repeaters at Church Road, providing 23 simultaneous call paths and a dedicated control channel.
• Additional 4 repeaters at Roehampton and 3 at Raynes Park for multi-site capacity and local survivability.
• Around 200 radios and 40+ talk groups day to day, rising by 1,200+ radios and 60+ extra talk groups during The Championships.
• Dual-redundant architecture with automated failover and power backup.
• Optical DAS for underground and high-interference areas, with no loss of coverage if the standby system takes over.
• Control room workflows, reporting, network analytics, managed service support and training.

The outcome

The AELTC now has a communications platform that fits the way the estate actually runs. It supports day-to-day operations across three sites and gives the club the headroom to scale cleanly for the busiest fortnight in tennis. The infrastructure was built with that peak in mind, so the club can add users, talk groups and temporary capacity without changing the foundations every year.

Operationally, the estate has firmer control and fewer weak spots. Teams can be given the right permissions across sites and talk groups. Controllers can see more, do more and respond faster. Coverage holds up where the environment is hardest. Redundancy, remote support and managed service keep the platform steady when the operation is under pressure.

The software environment adds a better read on how the network is being used. Reporting, call recording, traffic monitoring and system analytics turn communications data into something operational teams can act on. That helps the club tune the live setup, understand demand patterns and make better-informed decisions about future changes and capacity planning.

The wider business result is stronger readiness. Multiple user groups, encrypted private calls, integrated alerts, engineered coverage and ongoing support all contribute to a safer, more controlled estate with better uptime and better long-term value.

Closing paragraph

The platform also gives the AELTC room to keep building. GPS tracking, lone worker capability and WAVE PTX sit within the future roadmap, alongside further optimisation of coverage and control room workflows. The club has a system built for the way it operates now, and a partner that can keep extending it as the operation changes.