National Grid Wireless wins 102.1 Swansea Bay Radio contract

12 October 2006

National Grid Wireless has been awarded a managed transmission service agreement by Swansea Bay Radio, the brand new FM station, which will launch later this year and serve the city and its surrounding areas.

National Grid Wireless will construct a new antenna and transmitter at its existing site at Kilvey Hill, to the east of Swansea. The end-to-end solution involves the complete management of the radio station’s transmission from the point where the programmes leave the studio. This service includes round-the-clock remote monitoring at the service management centre at National Grid Wireless’ Warwick headquarters, and support from locally based field engineers.

Swansea Bay Radio is part of Town and Country Broadcasting, which also includes neighbouring stations Radio Pembrokeshire, Radio Carmarthenshire and Scarlet FM. National Grid Wireless already provides similar services to the group’s existing stations.

Tony Moretta, general manager, broadcast, at National Grid Wireless, said: “As the provider of managed services to 9 of the 11 national radio networks it is exciting for us to be bringing this quality of service to local radio.”

The new FM local commercial radio licence for Swansea was awarded by Ofcom in November 2005 to Swansea Bay Radio Limited, which was one of three bids. The station has a potential audience of 500,000 listeners.

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Notes to Editors:

About National Grid Wireless

National Grid Wireless is a wholly owned subsidiary of National Grid and is the leading independent provider of infrastructure to the mobile telecommunications operators in the UK.

National Grid Wireless is also one of two UK providers of terrestrial infrastructure for the transmission of analogue and digital television and radio broadcasts in the UK and as such achieves a 98% population coverage. In addition to the traditional analogue services, National Grid Wireless has a strong position in the growing digital television market, owning two of the six digital terrestrial television licences and providing infrastructure services to all the Freeview channels and the BBC and BSkyB.

For further information:

Stephen Arnold
National Grid Wireless
+44 (0) 1926 416 870
+44 (0) 7803 887 288 (m)