Sepura visit
Continuous
improvement
Critical Communications Today visits Sepura’s headquarters to learn more about the
benefits of applications that can run over TETRA and the company’s approach to
mission-critical device design
26
www.criticalcomms.com September 2019
While events are a fantastic place to
network and learn about new products,
their frantic nature and the busyness of
most stands mean that time is a premium
and it is not always possible to have long
in-depth conversations or peek behind the scenes to get some
additional insight. That is why we are paying a visit to Sepura
(which we last covered as part of our reporting on Critical
Communications World’s exhibition) to learn a bit more
about its approach to radio and application design and the
amount of testing that goes into finished products.
Back in 2015, Sepura moved from Radio House in central
Cambridge, a building once occupied by Pye Telecom,
to a 64,000 sq ft purpose-built property in Cambridge
Research Park. As we pull in and walk into its spacious and
natural-light-filled reception, we are greeted by Ben Yelton,
who handles its communications. He leads us upstairs to
the boardroom where Terence Ledger (sales and marketing
director) and David Croft (product marketing manager)
are waiting. Ledger explains that following his recent
appointment, having previously been Sepura’s regional
director for Asia-Pacific, he brought in Croft to head its
marketing team and focus on its product marketing.
Ledger says: “This year one of our challenges is to
make sure that we’re able to deliver all the radios that have
been ordered from us already; we’ve been quite successful
– particularly since mid-last year – just in the fact that so
many organisations in Europe are doing refreshes of radios,
so we’ve just got a logistical challenge – it is a nice problem
to have, but that also affects our whole supply chain.
“We also have to be sure that when people are looking
at what’s available today and our roadmap for tomorrow
we can demonstrate that we are able to meet their future
mission critical needs now and in the future and that any
decisions they make today are consistent with that journey.”
Ledger explains that the company’s new SCG22 mobile
TETRA terminal, which was launched at CCW in
Kuala Lumpur, has the same platform and applications
environment used in the company’s portable terminals;
the LTE Vehicle terminal prototype has the same physical
dimensions and mounting options to simplify the
retrofitting within existing installations; and the SC20’s
large, high-resolution screen that can be easily used for databased
applications. These design choices are all part of the
company’s “continuity roadmap” towards more intelligent
devices and its path towards LTE.
He notes one constraint is the ‘real estate’ on a person – a
police officer can be carrying 2-3kg of equipment on their
belt, hence the SC21’s small form factor, and the integration
of a body-worn video camera with a remote speaker mic.
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