Castle Mall shopping centre goes digital with Radio Links

Located near to Norwich Castle in the heart of the city centre, Castle Mall features 80 shops, a sprawling food hall, an eight-screen multiplex cinema and two multi-story car parks.

With four of its five levels underground, 371,000 square feet to cover and an annual footfall that exceeds ten million, ensuring the safety and security of both shoppers and employees was a top priority for management but presented a range of challenges.

The smooth and safe running of the shopping centre is reliant on multiple teams being able to communicate instantly and efficiently across the large site – something that the mall’s outdated analogue system was failing to deliver.

Castle Mall had two issues it was looking to resolve. Major changes to the shopping mall site had resulted in loss of radio signal in many areas, increased numbers of communication blackspots and noisy and intermittent radio communications.

An unreliable comms network where there are inherent health and safety risks could potentially result in teams not receiving messages during critical emergency procedures. It was therefore essential to management that all Castle Mall shopping centre staff could contact one another and communicate across the whole site instantly at any given time.