The NED

Brentwood was asked to provide a two way radio solution which would keep the hotel’s security, maintenance, front of house and concierge teams in contact throughout the 310,00 sq ft premises.

Modern digital technology has vastly increased the capabilities of two way radio to provide flawless communications coverage even in the largest buildings. For handsets, we supplied Motorola DP4400e and DP4600e digital radios. Both offer outstanding audio quality, with automatic volume adjusting and advanced noise cancelling technologies included as standard.

Both models support private and group calling, meaning hotel staff could target messages to the right people and set up team call groups. The DP4600e’s display models were set up with Caller ID to show users who was calling. As security features, all handsets were programmed with a one-touch emergency button and PTT interrupt, guaranteeing urgent calls could get through in any situation.

The main requirement, however, was to ensure that the signal range for the whole system was good enough to provide crystal clear communication throughout the building. We turned in the first instance to the traditional means of boosting network coverage, installing Motorola SLR5500 repeaters. But rather than have the repeaters working in isolation, we wanted to combine their effects to create a single large scale network which would allow all staff to communicate to and from anywhere.

To achieve this, we used Motorola IP Site Connect software. IP Site Connect allows different two way radio networks to be linked together via WiFi, so handsets can intercommunicate between the networks. By linking the repeaters in this way, treating each as a separate network, we could boost the network coverage significantly using the hotel’s broadband.