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GAI-Tronics has announced an agreement with Burnside Telecom to produce and market a series of GSM-enabled rugged telephone and terminal products. The jointly developed products, which are designed for tough indoor and outdoor use, will combine GAI-Tronics technology with Burnside innovation inside.

The first product range will include versions of GAI-Tronics market-leading product styles, including Commander and Titan handset phones, public access, VR and PHP400 hands-free help point phones. Each model will incorporate a GSM communication board, based on Burnside’s existing phone range, and GAI-Tronics’ proprietary mechanical and external components.

This comprehensive range of products will offer a broad set of features and flexible power supply options. Burnside Telecom Ltd. is the UK’s leading designer and manufacturer of innovative fixed cellular phones and terminals, delivering key solutions to the fixed mobile convergence (FMC) markets. Burnside products are used in a huge variety of applications from office and care home communications through to taxi hailing, railway and road-side use.

Colin Aitken, managing director at Burnside Telecom, added: "GAI-Tronics and Burnside have worked together to develop a more affordable integrated solution with a broader range of power management and installation features. Later this year, we will also add 3G support to our portfolio of products."

The first product, the GAI-Tronics Commander GSM, has been launched and delivered. It is designed for indoor and outdoor use where a tough, robust telephone is needed with the minimum of set-up effort. Applications include:

  • Transport networks – trackside, roadside, service areas, stations, baggage handling areas, airfields, shipping docks, ferry terminals
  • Leisure facilities – lakeside, poolside, leisure centres, campuses
  • Vehicle hire – car rental, taxi hire
  • Enterprise – factory environments, goods-in / despatch areas, car parks, high noise environments
  • And more – safety critical areas, security services, police stations, youth hostels

Bret Hatt, sales marketing manager of GAI-Tronics UK commented: "This joint development with Burnside Telecom expands our telephone product range and will enable us to jointly market our rugged handsets and GSM terminal products to a global market."

The main drivers for the demand for rugged wall or post mounted GSM products include:

  • Need for alternative technologies where the cost of laying phone cables to remote sites may be prohibitive for example "help point" telephones in isolated rail stations or unmanned level crossings
  • The ability to provide temporary communications with minimum set-up and commissioning time for example for construction work sites or civil engineering projects, festivals, concerts or exhibitions.
  • Increase in costs of replacing copper where important communications are put at risk by the theft of the cables connecting remote telephones or sites.
  • Growth in deployment of local private mobile networks in large enterprises, where there is a substitution of land-line wireless to provide services in areas of general access