Airteq

In August 1995, Montagu invested two amounts of £1.5 million development capital into two growing companies, Airtech and Airteq, both involved in the hi-tech communication and multimedia industries. The link between the two companies was Chairman Nick Randall who had an outstanding record of developing hi tech business.

Airtech was involved in wireless communications established through developments and manufacturing activities carried out for the Royal Navy over many years. These enabled Airtech to develop further commercial business based around the rapidly growing worldwide radio communications market. The company produced a range of 200 products focused on enhancing the quality of communications in the private mobile radio market, from radio frequency combiners, receiver systems and components, to communication sub-systems.

More recently, Airtech had identified opportunities in the emerging high frequency cellular PCN (Personal Communication Network) networks. Airtech had designed a range of coverage enhancement products for this sector, and had already secured several significant contracts to supply equipment for PCN based stations - including a base station network in the UK and a base station in Singapore.

Airteq was formed as a start-up operation in 1988 to exploit technology developed in the Airtech business. Airteq's core skill was the development of bespoke training solutions for a number of large organisations. Initially, it provided mainly video based training solutions, but progressively developed more experience with interactive projects, starting first with the interactive laser disc and later moving into CD-ROM based multimedia computer training.

Demand for multimedia applications had been boosted dramatically by recent developments in technology and standards. Within the training field, the advantage of computer based training over 'talk and chalk' methods had become widely established. The next stage was multimedia computer based training which was set to advance rapidly. Airteq had already designed and supplied such training solutions to a large number of organisations in the pharmaceutical, automotive and public sectors. This experience had enabled it to develop a range of 'dynamic solutions' where existing skeleton systems could be tailored to a client's needs.