Icom NZ's growing success

A focus on innovation and relationships has seen Icom NZ’s business boom by 30%.

Icom NZ was established 22 years ago by Dave Dawson; the company is now owned and operated by his daughter, Sharon Dawson. It’s one of only three Icom businesses out of 80 globally that isn’t owned by the Icom parent company. This gives it the flexibility to be completely stand-alone while still having the backing of a global brand that supplies more than a million radios per year worldwide.

The company moved to new premises close to Auckland Airport last year, more than doubling its storage capacity, and distributes to more than 100 radio dealers and outlets across New Zealand.

Icom NZ has experienced rapid growth in recent years. We spoke with its general manager, Simon Green, to find what’s driving that growth and where the company is headed.

Icom NZ General Manager Simon Green.

**********

Growth in this industry is always welcome news. How have you made it happen?

Over the last three years we have doubled our staff numbers and increased sales by 30%, which is really bucking the trend of radio manufacturers in New Zealand. Our analog radio sales have held steady along with the massive growth in digital. We were probably a little slow in getting the facts about our technology into the marketplace but, now that more and more users understand the benefits of NXDN, we are rolling out some pretty big projects around the country.

I’d put our success down to strong relationships with our dealer base, with whom we work very closely, as well as being very active in the marketplace.

Are there any standout projects that Icom NZ is involved with?

Our highest profile project is probably Christchurch City Council, which rolled out an Icom multisite, multichannel network for their Civil Defence and Emergency Management (CDEM) and Rural Fire unit. Since then, though, we’ve supplied systems to a wide range of organisations — from the Coastguard, through to our most recent project with the Fullers ferry and tourism group.

Probably the biggest shock to the industry, though, was when we replaced a DMR system in Auckland, that had been in place for less than two years, with an Icom digital network.

What trends do you see in the NZ two-way industry?

I think the next couple of years are going to be challenging for everyone. The recent change to narrowband has pushed a lot of businesses into updating their radios to be compliant, which will leave a bit of a vacuum that we will need to fill.

The future for Icom, though, is really exciting. We have more than 300 development staff working on next-generation communications, with a huge focus on IP-capable equipment. Earlier this year we launched our first IP-only radio (the IP100H) that operates across Wi-Fi and has the ability to link with wider-area radio networks. It’s really opened up new markets for us — the IP100H is even being used to communicate on a project sending rockets into space from Canterbury.

It used to be that we would have RF engineers who knew a little about networking; now, the trend is to have network engineers who know about RF, and I think that’s probably a good pointer to future trends.

What’s the status of narrowbanding in NZ, and how have Icom NZ and the wider industry been dealing with it?

Narrowbanding has pretty much been completed now, with the deadline upon us. Icom NZ was pretty well placed to support the changeover as we’d already been supplying narrowband-capable radios for many years. In fact, we’re all set for any potential future change, as all our digital radios operate to a true 6.25 kHz channel spacing.

The biggest challenge has been in the forestry industry, where there seems to have been a lot of wideband equipment still in use. It’s been handled on a very sensible basis, with the deadline being extended a few months to allow radio dealers to cope with the logistics of upgrading equipment in some very difficult locations.

Are there any problems or trends that are NZ specific from a technical or regulatory point of view?

New Zealand is a really interesting market due to it being the home territory of a reasonably large global supplier. With that influence in mind, it means that discussions about new technology have been very one-sided.

The introduction of digital radio has also presented its own challenges from a compliance point of view, with new standards having to be introduced to allow Radio Spectrum Management to continue to manage the radio spectrum effectively. With changes to testing and type-approval labelling of equipment, we’re having to keep a close eye on legislation to keep up to date.

What lessons have you taken from the Canterbury earthquakes?

When the earthquake hit, there was a fantastic response nationwide. Icom NZ donated 200 radios to the region as quickly as we could to help with on-site communication. It really brought home the need for emergency response organisations to have a totally independent method of communicating effectively, something two-way radio is still the best at. Moving forward, this had a strong bearing on the CDEM project and led to them rolling out their own Icom network.

Icom was also affected by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan 2011, where the same quick action with stand-alone communications helped emergency services cope with their immediate response.

Can you explain your project to integrate different modalities?

We have launched a product called VE-PG3, which is more exciting that the name would suggest. Essentially it patches multiple communication technologies together, with each unit having up to four independent inputs. These can be as varied as UHF, VHF, cellular, landline and PC-based devices. It’s really taking away the barriers between the differing technology bases — and the best thing is that it doesn’t need a network engineering background to set up.

In the lab, we are even now patching P25 to NXDN, though still only at a voice level. We’re still realising the full potential of the VE-PG3, but it’s something that could be a real game changer.

Finally, on a personal note, how did you get into the radio business?

I started in the radio industry in the UK 15 years ago, working in sales at a Motorola dealership. From there I went into project management, at one point running a commercial radio project for the UK Ministry of Defence, rolling out single and multisite networks across the world, including the UK, Cyprus, Gibraltar and even the Ascension Islands.

After that I spent seven years as managing director of Sedgewall Communications, a design and manufacturing business working on developing TETRA equipment for organisations such as Airwave Solutions, the UK Fire Service and Funkwerk Kopenik in Germany.

A move to New Zealand in 2013 was followed by a very fortuitous meeting with Sharon Dawson, Icom NZ’s managing director, and I ended up as general manager.