James Salmon, managing director, Dover Marine Services and Dover Sea Safari, and director of the Wet Wheels South East charity (which builds disabled people’s confidence by taking them out to sea in modified, accessible powerboats), uses the LTE radios to ensure safety and provide communication alongside conventional marine VHF.
“We operate charter vessels in the English Channel under the White Cliffs of Dover and Folkestone,” said Salmon. “We were looking for a system that could provide us with the necessary coverage to help our business and in turn give our customers a better experience.
“We trialled the Icom LTE/PoC radios over a busy weekend and they worked exceedingly well in all areas, the audio quality is stunning and off the coast here the cellular service remains good so it’s great to have peace in mind knowing that we can be contacted, not just by VHF but also privately by LTE and have a telephone style conversation.
"After the trials we were so impressed we bought some and now have an LTE radio in our office ashore plus others on each of our vessels. We are also looking at increasing the number of LTE radios in our network [using] the group function so that we can listen/monitor group calling between our inshore lake facility which is around 60 miles further inland.”
