Uxbridge BID upgrade to Smart Radio
"Building a new CCTV Control room demanded significant investment and a solid business case to proceed."
New Term, New System!
With a successful BID renewal vote in July 2022, Love Uxbridge had a clear mandate for the next five years and spent no time at all before launching their first major project of the new term. A new Smart Radio system provided a much needed refresh for the businesses, increasing the coverage area, improving audio quality and introducing powerful analytics to support the BID team.
About Love Uxbridge
Launched in 2017, Uxbridge Business Improvement District (Love Uxbridge) is a non-profit organisation that represents the local business community and works to promote and improve the designated BID Zone. Since 2017 the BID has invested over £2.5 million of Levy income into Uxbridge town centre, with an additional £460,000 of commercial and Government Funding being secured over the same Term. This income has been used with the simple aim; to help make Uxbridge an even more attractive, welcoming and safe place to shop, socialise, work and live.
The Challenges
- ‘Dumb’ Radios
- Supply Issues
- Aging Equipment
The existing radio system being used had been in place for almost 10 years, Installed by ShopSafe for the former Crime Reduction Partnership that was later adopted as part of BID. Whilst fully functional, thanks to the service exchange package still in place, the equipment, with age, had become somewhat ‘clunky’ and ‘dumb’ in comparison to the modern technology now available.
Furthermore the impact of global events and the fall out of two years of Covid had meant that stock shortages were becoming a major issue in sourcing replacement parts for the aging radios. It was time for an upgrade!
The Solutions
Based in the London Borough of Hillingdon in the West London, the area naturally boasts excellent 4G & 5G coverage. ShopSafe suggested that a migration to their ‘SmartRadio’ Solution would be the way to go, with substantial benefits for both the users and management team. The new devices were delivered to the BID fully prepared and ready to go. After an initial demonstration to the BID team, A ShopSafe representative, along with the full BID team, took to the streets to deliver, train and collect the old equipment to all seventy members in just a single day.
The backbone of the SmartRadio platform is a fully cloud based and UK hosted communication network, hosted on Microsoft Azure to ensure uncompromised resilience and security as well as meeting stringent ISO27001 and GDPR compliance. Users communicate on the platform from a range of Hytera devices via the public cellular or through internal Wi-Fi. The radio handset chosen for the users was the Hytera PNC370. Compact, lightweight and Intuitive it’s a major upgrade from the old devices and at roughly half the weight and size! It is packed full of features including a full colour OLED screen to identify the incoming caller, emergency panic button and exceptional audio quality. For the ranger team the PNC550 is Hytera’s hybrid radio and android smart phone and offers additional functionality such as the ability to playback transmissions and to easily see who is online.
To support the users there are two control stations installed in two large shopping centre evidence suites and a further unit in the council CCTV control room. All voice calls are recorded to the system and able to be played back at the touch of a button. The BID are further able to access the ShopSafe Insight portal to download customised reports and analytics such as radio usage and number of calls per user. It’s also a great tool to manage all of their radio assets as these are stored against each customer in the dedicated CRM.
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