An 18-year-old Australian emergency lighting systems manufacturer plans to beam into the global, wireless communications marketplace with products company leaders say are ideal for serving low- to medium-density populations.
Sydney-based Stanilite Pacific Ltd. will focus on building wireless systems for small municipalities, said Thomas Morrow, vice president of Stanilite’s North American operations in Palm Harbor, Fla. “We won’t be going after big deals against Motorola [Inc.] or [L.M.] Ericsson. We just want to quietly make noise,” Morrow said.
The company of 700-plus employees designs, manufactures and markets wireless telecommunications systems, electronic systems and defense communications. Stanilite recently landed a contract valued at $34 million from Compania de Telefonos del Interior S.A. of Argentina to build a cellular infrastructure covering more than 400 sites.
“It is one of the few nationwide cellular networks to use satellite as the means of connecting remote sites,” said Phillip Sibree, Stanilite’s international general manager. Added intelligence in Stanilite’s Smart Cellswitch Radio Base Stations allow local calls to be switched at the local base station without impacting the satellite system. This type of distributed networking enables distant population centers to receive nationwide coverage, Sibree said.
Stanilite also offers fixed wireless access products providing all call deconcentration, traffic routing and protocol conversions, fully substituting the wired local loop. Stanilite’s wireless subscriber network is an integrated system that handles all call management, billing, air interface to customer equipment and operations and maintenance functions. Equipment is available for analog, Extended Total Access Communications System, trunked radio systems and Stanilite’s digital Code Division Multiple Access fixed wireless access system.
Other wireless offerings include the Stanilite Digital Trunked Mobile Radio system and the Trunkswitch mobile radio system. Stanilite’s DTMR system complies with the APCO-25 standard of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International Inc. “We see APCO-25 as the standard for the future. For the last three years we’ve spent a lot of time and money investing into it and we support it 100 percent. It’s driven by user groups instead of manufacturers,” Morrow said.
Stanilite intends to market to small government agencies, Morrow noted. “Telecom managers today favor an open architecture and freedom of choice of product. They don’t want to be locked into one vendor.”
Trunkswitch is a full-featured trunked radio system that can be used when frequency spectrum is scarce.
The system allocates radio frequencies each time a subscriber initiates a conversation. Trunkswitch can provide advanced call handling procedures with as few as 50 subscribers, the company said.
Stanilite operates manufacturing plants on the east and west coasts of Australia and in Auckland, New Zealand. Each plant contains research and development labs. About 12 percent of company revenues are devoted to research; 25 percent of the staff are involved in product development.
“We’re heavily engineering loaded, which means we’re working on new technologies,” Morrow said.
The company began as a manufacturer of emergency lighting in 1978 in Australia, then moved into the communications equipment business with the purchase of the Unilabs manufacturing facility in Perth.
Stanilite now employs more than 700 people worldwide, with offices in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, Australia, and international offices in Cyprus, South Africa, India and Hong Kong.
Stanilite was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1989. Market capitalization exceeds $130 million with revenue of $70 million.
