Its preferred supplier of mobile field service solutions, Telepartner, will manage the process of migrating to the new Vodafone V1605 Windows Mobile 5 device.  Southern Water will keep an option to switch from GSM to managed GPRS communications in the future. The solution is used to carry job details from the control centre to the field workforce.
 
Telepartner reckons the move from the Symbian OS used by the Nokias to Windows for Mobile 5 will take less than two months.  ‘This is a project that would have taken many months a short time ago,’ said Patrick Jolly, Telepartner’s sales manager.

‘Southern Water uses a comprehensive, sophisticated mobile application which covers work orders for planned and emergency task types, with support for multiple job types and updates, equipment, NRSWA (New Roads and Street Works Act) reporting and operational stats. The application offers task priority sorting, fault/cause/action codes and associated conditional logic plus lone worker support for all field operatives during the course of their working day. One of the key strengths of the proposed new Telepartner solution was speed of application deployment in the light of a vanishing supply of Nokia 9210 replacements,’ he added.