Mr. Williams: For the last three years the core business has increasingly been providing wireless-based technology products. We took that decision as I say about three years ago and increasingly have been focusing on that area, firstly, because we have very relevant and attractive products, and secondly, because it was clear to us that this was going to be an area where our expertise was relevant, that was going to enjoy very, very substantial above-industry growth rates; and so it has proved.
TWST: Tell me about the wireless Web space and the opportunities that it
represents; how large is it in your estimate; how fast is it growing?
Mr. Williams: I find it almost impossible to calibrate the potential for
our products in the space, - I'll try and explain why. Today the
products that we have are directed primarily but not exclusively at the
emergency services, and they take the form, for example, of us putting
technology into a police car, which effectively is a high-powered
Pentium that sits in the trunk of the car and a touch-screen system
which is mounted within the dashboard; and that system can communicate
over a variety of different networks. The police application in the UK
uses something which is called a packet switch network, and that's so
because the network provider entered into a framework agreement with the
Home Office some few years ago. That network is about to be overtaken
and replaced by a more flexible and more appropriate system called
Tetra. With our technology in the police car, it allows an officer to do
a variety of tasks which otherwise would be either impossible or
difficult for him to do. For example, there's an automatic vehicle
location system, so not only does he know where he is because he's
provided with a complete mapping system, but also the people back at
base know where he is. He's also able to make complex interrogations via
the touch screen, for example, entering in a registration number, and
that allows him to make an enquiry against a centrally-held police
database and get the response back in five or six seconds; this
contrasts with the old system which you see on television programmes
like The Bill, where over a crackly radio you go into central control,
and Daisy, if she's there, makes an entry via the computer and if she
remembers she'll call back the officer - by which time the car being
checked out has probably long since been dealt with or gone. But the
serious point here is that they're able to make very many more checks. I
think the last statistic on one of our police forces was that they were
making 33 times as many checks against the police database as they were
prior to our systems being deployed. I'm not saying that's a measure of
increased efficiency, but it's certainly an indication of the extent to
which they find this particularly feature helpful. And from that basic
platform of the technology in the vehicle, we have recently added a lot
more functionality for the police. For example, you may also have seen
on television a programme called Police-Camera-Action, a type of
programme where they show video clips of drivers who are behaving
somewhat eccentrically; almost without exception all of those video
clips are taken from the technology that we provide, and these are
effectively cameras mounted in the vehicle that make a recording within
the vehicle of whatever's being viewed at the time. As you've got
cameras via this technology, and because you've got intelligence via the
Pentium system that we install, you're able to do a lot more. We've
recently announced a capability which allows us to do automatic number
plate recognition from a mobile vehicle, and this is causing a great
deal of excitement. There are many other applications; we can remove
from the officer the chore of doing a lot of the paperwork - we can do
some of the paperwork automatically for him, for example. So the basic
premise is that we are providing at the moment in the vehicle almost a
complete command and control system designed to make life for the police
officer infinitely easier than it was hitherto. Now, that same principle
of course can be and is being used in other applications. It can be used
for fire brigades; it can also of course be used commercially for people
like service managers, and that's gradually where we are moving to. So
we're dealing with these market opportunities sector by sector, and
leading on from our success in the UK, where 22 of the 24 police forces
using mobile data are using our equipment, and all but one of the UK
police forces use our in-car video system. Having achieved that position
of pre-eminence in the UK, what we have been doing now for some months
is to move via the channels provided by a recent acquisition, into the
international market, and we now have a presence in 38 different
countries, through which we are now trying to flow the products of the
company.
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