Phased digital radio system upgrade approach
for the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Radiocoms has supplied and maintained the Museum’s radio equipment for the past eight years and as part of its consultancy began discussing the benefits of digital with the V&A’s visitor services team and the benefits it will bring.
The MOTOTRBO system’s Time-Divisional Multi-Access (TDMA) technology has provided double the channel capacity which has given the V&A the ability to seamlessly provide service to a variety of radio user groups and subgroups where it previously did not have the spectrum. The increased number of user groups has allowed the V&A to reduce the amount of radio traffic overheard by the general public.
The V&A, like many organisations, was keen to ensure they were able to provide an improvement on its current system whilst minimising its expenditure. Radiocoms’ consultative approach allowed the V&A to consider various options on how the system could be phased in without affecting its operations; by programming the digital radio handsets in analogue mode the handsets could be gradually introduced. Radiocoms supplied the Motorola DP4000 hand portable which was the first handset by Motorola which allowed 5-tone in analogue mode, this was critical in operating with the existing equipment.