ROOF RACKS SECURE PROFIT FOR IQ CAMBRIDGE FIRM
Car roof racks containing sophisticated radio monitoring equipment are leading a quiet revolution throughout Europe, as well as transforming the fortunes of Cambridge Radio Frequency Services (CRFS), a fast-growing high-tech company at IQ Cambridge Business Park.
Established just over two years ago, CRFS won a commission from Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, to create the first detailed map of radio communications usage throughout the country. The interest in their services has since spread abroad, and the company has gone from strength to strength.
The brainchild of Alistair Massarella, CRFS’s managing director, the monitoring system pioneered by the company had an unlikely beginning as an attempt to tune out irritating pockets of radio interference.
“At the time I was a partner in Cambridge Broadband” says Alistair (a company in which he is still a shareholder). “When we were deploying equipment in various parts of the world we found there was an interference problem. It might have been caused by anything: air conditioning, even a microwave oven. The only way to find out was to take a spectrum analyser, which is a big piece of kit, in a Land Rover, and try and discover the source.
“It had limited use and was costly. I realised we needed distributed systems with nodes deployed over the city being covered. That way we could do a survey and get much more information, on a 24/7 basis. It would be much better and less expensive. As it was, nothing like it existed at the time”.
His solution was to set up CRFS, which he managed by writing a business plan, attracting funding from Cambridge Angels, and soon afterward winning the commission from Ofcom to map the UK’s airwaves. An inspired piece of lateral thinking led to Alistair’s implementation strategy. For a small fee he persuaded an army of travelling sales reps to fit roof racks in their cars, in which were installed his patented ‘RFeye’ monitoring system.
The information gathered by the fleet allows Ofcom and other interested parties, such as the MOD and mobile phone operators, to fully exploit the radio spectrum. With access to UK-wide spectrum monitoring data, operators can tune their networks and save literally millions of pounds each year.
With all that at stake, investment in CRFS has been more than forthcoming. There has been another angel funding round since the March 2008 monies, and French angels are coming in, along with EU cash. As a result, CRFS is heading for a £1.2 million turnover at the end of only its second financial year.
Kate Dean, Regional Manager of SEGRO, landlords of IQ Cambridge, comments: “The pioneering work of CRFS has made them phenomenally successful, and we’re proud to have organisations of their calibre on the park.
They are the second communications venture at IQ Cambridge to benefit from Government backing. The first was the Regional Control Centre for the Fire & Rescue Services, a project worth around £23 million.
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