Western Power Distribution Goes Live with Phase One of Major Wireless Data Communications Project

Published 19th June 2008

Leading utility company Western Power Distribution (WPD) has gone live with the first phase of its major £5m new data communications network to support over 10,000 network calls per day and ensure resilient communications across the South West of England and Wales.

WPD’s Xfin Multisite system was successfully designed, manufactured, deployed, installed and commissioned within just 10 months by radio communications specialist Team Simoco.

The Xfin Multisite has already proven its resilience when severe weather swept across the UK and winds of up to 82mph hit the South West and South Wales earlier this year. The system withstood the extreme conditions, enabling WPD’s engineers to communicate effectively and quickly restore power to the 100,000 customers affected by the storms.

Phase One of the project, which is one of the largest utility radio network contracts of its kind awarded in the UK, has enhanced voice communications between staff, ensuring optimum service for the company’s 2.4 million customers.

Phil Allen, WPD’s Logistics Manager said: “The Xfin Multisite provides us with a secure, robust and resilient comms network, providing us with effective communications in any emergency situation and across some of the most diverse terrain in the UK, from urban areas such as Bristol and Cardiff, to rural and coastal areas such as Dartmoor, Brecon Beacons, Cornwall and the Gower.”

Mike Norfield, Team Simoco Managing Director added: “The South West and South Wales installation projects were completed within 12 and 13 working days respectively, ensuring WPD quickly had the infrastructure in place to communicate effectively in any situation. The Winter storms put Xfin to the test and confirmed that the Multisite has the resilience to be used in the most mission critical of operating environments.”

Team Simoco has worked closely with WPD during installation and deployment to fine tune the operating system and develop a communications system that is customised to meet current and future business requirements.

WPD opted for Team Simoco’s advanced Xfin technology for the entire upgrade, with 368 Xfin blades deployed at 102 base stations to serve 1,450 mobile users, either by handheld radios or in-vehicle installations, and 92 Xfin Dispatcher PCs installed within 14 working days.

The Xfin Multisite provides a fully functional system controller and base station in a single, rackmount unit. It delivers voice communications over an IP backbone, and includes integrated telephony channel interfaces as standard, allowing dynamically allocated telephone audio to be routed over an IP network to any traffic channel.

The future-proofed design enables easy network expansion, while its distributed IP system architecture and multiple fallback modes means Xfin is the only inherently resilient MPT1327 system. Xfin’s remote diagnostics enable centralised management control, and its hot-swap modular replacement enables live system maintenance without loss of service.