PROCEDATOS expands TaitNet MPT1327 system

In 2001, the Venezuelan power utility company PROCEDATOS made the difficult but necessary decision to migrate from its legacy Nokia Actionet radio system to an open standard MPT1327 trunked solution.

A key requirement for the migration was that communications could not be disrupted. With a responsibility for transmitting and distributing electric power to over 600,000 business and domestic customers throughout the populous western state of Zulia, PROCEDATOS could not afford any interruption to its services.

Tait Custom Integration developed a novel gateway, enabling 1500 legacy terminals to be re-used without impacting existing operations or forcing expensive re-training. Tait, in conjunction with its Venezuelan partner ATEL TRADING developed and deployed a migration solution that was both successful and cost-effective with local technical support.

Since 2001 PROCEDATOS has become a subsidiary of the larger national power utility company ENELEVEN. The final Tait MPT1327 solution covered 11 sites with a total of 98 channels. Since it provides communications for operations in the economically critical oil regions of Maracaibo city and Maracaibo Lake, it was decided for further redundancy to include extra nodes in different locations in addition to the existing Tait High Availability configuration. The rollout of this backup capability will be completed early next year.

Utility companies throughout the world are technically and commercially highly cautious regarding their investment in technology and communications. Thus, in spite of the trend to digital, many have opted for MPT1327 technology in which Tait is the world leader. PROCEDATOS have backed their initial decision with plans to expand their new trunked network with an additional four sites.