Details
Every communication system works on the day it is handed over. What distinguishes them is how they behave in year five, and that is decided by whether anyone was responsible for them in between.
What support actually covers
| Area | Work |
|---|---|
| Scheduled maintenance | Inspection, cleaning, measurement, firmware, documented |
| Fault response | Defined response time by severity, with escalation |
| Programming | Changes as departments and talkgroups change |
| Repair | Authorised repair with original parts, tracked |
| Spares | An agreed pool, held where it can be reached in time |
| Batteries | Managed replacement cycle rather than reactive |
| Coverage | Periodic re-verification against the original measurement |
| Licensing | Renewals, variations and record keeping with BTK |
The items that are always underestimated
Batteries. Two to three years of daily use, or roughly 500 to 800 cycles. Capacity falls gradually, so nobody notices until several radios die together during a busy shift. A managed replacement cycle is cheaper than that morning.
Antennas and feeders. Outdoor installations corrode, connectors admit water, cables are damaged by weather and by other trades. A degraded feeder can quietly discard most of the signal, and the symptom presented is always "the radios are not working properly".
Programming drift. Departments reorganise, people change roles, new sites open. A configuration nobody maintains diverges from the organisation until the talkgroup structure describes a company that no longer exists.
Documentation. The person who knew how the system was built leaves. Without records, the next change is guesswork and the next fault takes three times as long.
Systems we did not supply
We take over existing estates, starting with a survey of what is installed, how it is configured, the licence position and the physical condition of antennas, feeders, repeaters and batteries.
That survey frequently identifies the real cause of long-standing complaints. Poor audio blamed on the handsets turns out to be a corroded connector on the repeater feeder; a coverage gap blamed on the building turns out to be an antenna that shifted after roof work.
What a service agreement should state
Numbers, not adjectives:
- Response time by severity — what constitutes critical, and how quickly it is attended
- Inclusions and exclusions — what is covered, what is chargeable, and what accidental damage means
- Spares — which items, how many, held where
- Scheduled work — what is done, how often, and what report it produces
- Escalation — who is called when the first response is not sufficient
"Prompt attention" is not a commitment. A four-hour response for a repeater outage is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a maintenance agreement cover?
Four things, stated as numbers rather than adjectives. Response time by fault severity, what is included against what is chargeable, the spares held and where, and the scheduled work — inspections, firmware, battery replacement and coverage re-verification. An agreement that promises prompt attention without defining it is not an agreement about anything.
Do you service systems you did not install?
Yes. It begins with a survey: what is installed, how it is configured, what the licence position is, and what condition the antennas, feeders and batteries are in. That survey often finds the actual cause of complaints that were previously attributed to the radios — a corroded connector or a battery pool past its life, rather than the handsets.
How long do radio batteries last?
Typically two to three years of daily use, or roughly 500 to 800 charge cycles, before capacity falls far enough to matter mid-shift. The failure is gradual and therefore easy to miss until several fail during a busy period. Replacing a fleet’s batteries on a schedule costs less than the disruption of doing it reactively.
Why re-verify coverage after installation?
Because the building and the surroundings change. A new structure, a re-clad roof, grown vegetation, a racking change or a refurbishment all alter the RF picture that was measured at handover. Periodic re-measurement finds those changes before an incident does, and it is the only way to know whether the system still delivers what it was accepted on.