Maddux Report - Tampa Bay's Business, Finance and Development Magazine

Along the Corridor

RadioSoft Covers the Range

By 1985, radio engineer Peter Moncure had become annoyed with the fact that positioning radio signal towers and predicting station coverage areas were still matters for educated guesswork. After all, building a $1-million tower in the wrong location can turn out to have been a very bad decision. Technology had reached the point where someone should come up with a solution.

Unlike some better-known technology pioneers, Moncure didn't have a garage, but his Florida home have did a large bathroom, and that's where RadioSoft Inc. (www.radiosoft.com) was born. Moncure's idea was to create software that would accuratly predict radio coverage areas, whether for public stations, two-way radio systems or public safety networks. How many people will it reach? How much interference might there be from other stations or systems?

The resulting software has built RadioSoft, a 10-employee firm in Edgewater, into a global player in this niche market. Customers include Motorola Inc., Clear Channel Communications Inc., Motorola Inc. Marketing Director Dale Tahner says Motorola will use the firm's "complete software package to locate new frequencies and license them, all using our software." RadioSoft's technology will simplify setup and modification of land mobile stations, allow online filing of Federal Communications Commission forms and enhance new frequency discovery, all in real time, using the most current data available, the company says.

Tahner says the market, now worth perhaps $7 to $10 million annually, is expanding because of the growth of low-powered FM radio stations, low-powered television stations and DirectTV. In addition, with most TV stations switching from analog to digital, knowing what their coverage areas are actually going to be is critical.

Part of the software package produces 2D and 3D maps. "The 3D maps are revealing," Tahner says. "You can tell why you're not getting the signal where you want it, whether it's a valley or a mountain or interference from another station."

In addition to radio stations, another large market segment is public safety and commercial trucking or cab companies using two-way radio systems or cellular phones. "You need to know you're not out of the range of your dispatcher. Knowledge of transmission ranges is critical," Tahner says. "You can have a tower 200 feet in the air and you know you're going to transmit a long way, but when somebody has a receiver in his belt three feet off the ground, it's another story."

While RadioSoft's ComStudy software package is in use globally, the company is currently boosting its global effort by establishing distributorships in countries such as Brazil and Japan.

Lighting Points of Fiber
Having lit the final section of its fiber optic network that reaches about 1,850 miles from Central Florida cities to Atlanta, Orlando's EPIK Communications Inc. (www.epik.net) in August became the first carrier's carrier to provide connectivity for its customers at the NAP (network access point) of the Americas, located at 50 N.E. Ninth Street in Miami.

The NAP of the Americas, the country's fifth tier-one NAP and the first to be privately developed, is a peering point for carriers and service providers routing Internet traffic between the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America.

EPIK is a two-and-a-half-year-old subsidiary of Florida East Coast Industries Inc. (NYSE:FLA; www.feci.com), the St. Augustine holding company that also owns Flagler Development Co., Florida East Coast Railway Co. and Florida Express Carriers Inc. EPIK's fiber network and points of presence (POPs), or switching centers, link Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Melbourne, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and Atlanta. EPIK leases access to its network to telecommunications providers who sell directly to commercial or residential customers.

The company says it is now swapping access to its network with other carrier's carrier firms, creating a national fiber network.

Potential Not Simulated
There is substantial potential for the future of the simulation technology industry, and it is just now emerging, Fred Hartman, a division director in the Defense Modeling & Simulation Office of the Pentagon told the fourth annual symposium on training technology held in Orlando in August. The event, sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based trade group, the National Defense Industrial Association, is held in Orlando because it is recognized as a simulation center, given the number of companies (about 150), government agencies and university researchers involved. More than 200 attended.

Hartman told the Orlando Sentinel that military spending on simulation is increasing and can be counted in the "billions of dollars." He noted that in addition to Department of Defense spending, independent studies have estimated a $650-million market in 2001 for the commercial applications and spinoffs that continue to appear in the video-game, manufacturing, general entertainment and medical markets sectors.

A Boost for STRICOM
Central Florida's widely recognized simulation-technology industry got a mid-year boost in the form of $418,000 in state military-infrastructure grants. The funds will be used to support the projects at the Army Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM) at the Central Florida Research Park next to the University of Central Florida campus in Orlando.

The bulk of the money, $345,000, will go toward building an advanced, computerized training facility for research and development.

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