Hunting Energy provides downhole products and services to the oil and gas industry for well construction, well completion, and exploration and production. Their main UK operations centre is in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire and by the nature of their work, the staff at this facility move around the large site with no fixed place of work. Some form of telecommunications was needed, both to support them in their work and from a health and safety point of view so that they could summon assistance if needed.
With the deployment of this first phase of the Private Mobile Network, there is coverage of over 85% of the site and staff at Laurencekirk are able to communicate with one another and with colleagues at the main site without incurring any call charges, whilst external calls are routed via the company’s PBX and charged at normal landline rates.
“The Private Mobile Network solution has been well received by staff. Signal strength is excellent and the voice quality and reliability have been perfect,” commented Neil Cumming, Global IT Manager for Hunting Energy. “Experience with solutions using UHF radio sets and standard mobile phone usage had been unsatisfactory, mainly due to interference, short battery life and poor signal strength,” he added.
The PMN server is installed at the company’s main site at Portlethen, Aberdeen, and an existing leased line between the sites used for the connection to a Private Mobile Network access point (Pico cell) at Laurencekirk.
“Because the PMN solution is fully compatible with GSM networks, Hunting are able to use ordinary mobile phones, so costs are much more manageable and battery life is much greater than their old radio sets,” explained Lesley Hansen, Group Marketing Director at TeleWare Plc.
Hunting Energy plans to extend the network in the next few months to ensure 100% coverage across the entire site.