Nov/Dec 2004

National Grid Transco has won the Mobile Data Association's accolade of "best corporate mobile data application of the decade" for its mobile workforce project.

The judges said it was the most successful real-time GPRS enterprise application to date, and had delivered benefits, cost savings and efficiencies to the organisation, as well as providing flexibility and productivity, and offering enhanced service to its customer base.

The application embraces 4,500 emergency gas workers and is mission-critical, since it processes information on gas leaks. It also includes another 5,000 mobile workers including management, maintenance crews and meter readers, who use a multitude of devices from rugged laptops to Windows CE devices depending on the application.

Behind it is the Apollo GPRS solution from Brand Communications, which replaced a public mobile radio network, and includes dynamic switching between bearers. It offers the ability to use wide-area networking for future developments, as well as GPS location for monitoring lone workers. Brand's military-grade AES encryption is said to ensure that only valid users can establish sessions and access applications.Ê