Major opened in Korea by Queen's Award winners RFI Global Services

27 June 2006

Basingstoke-based RFI Global Services have recently opened a Product Test facility in Korea.

Senior members of the UK Embassy and Gyeonggi Province in South Korea joined Stephen Kirk CEO of RFI-Global Services to open this totally new Cellular product testing laboratory set in the heartland of burgeoning mobile communication Companies such as LG and Samsung.

RFI 's brand new laboratories in Gunpo near Seoul were recently approved by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), placing RFI 's £3.6m investment as formally "open for business". Opened by Dr Kah-Kyu Sohn, Governor of Gyeonggi Province the ceremony was attended by major Mobile phone manufacturers, and senior members from, for example, KOTRA (Korean Trade and Investment Agency), Chambers of Commerce and Test equipment suppliers.

RFI, in opening a first rate facility for the mobile communications sector will help Korea to further develop its position within that sector. RFI's experience and technology has already led to them receiving the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2006, for its export achievements, and the first full project including 3G (HSDPA) testing is already underway for a major Korean handset manufacturer with further large orders for cellular handset testing going well into the summer.

RFI is currently installing a fully automated Radiated Spurious Emissions (RSE) measurement chamber to provide accredited RSE measurements on cellular devices defined within TS51.010-1 and EN301908-1. The RSE facility will include a Rainford Fully lined Anechoic Chamber with Orbit DUT positioning system and a Rohde and Schwarz TS9976 measurement system. It is expected that the second part of the expansion will be completed in October this year

The 6,000 square feet facility is equipped with the latest test platforms that include the Anritsu ME7873F-10 3G RF conformance tester including RRM, Multi-region support and HSDPA, a fully-loaded Aeroflex AIME/CT 6401 3G protocol  tester including InterRAT, a fully-loaded Aeroflex AIME/CT 6103 2G/2.5G protocol test platform, Cetecom 's MiNT quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE/AMR 2G/2.5GRF tester, a Setcom SCAT 5020 application tester and Comprion s IT3 Sim Simulator, together with further support equipment.

The range of test platforms have been carefully selected to provide RFI with the best test case coverage offering Korean customers the benefit of local access to a first class lab with a globally recognised brand name. RFI expects to have a complement of 20 staff by end of the first year of trading comprising both British expatriates and locally recruited personnel.

The growth in cellular terminal manufacturing and development in East Asia is such that 60% of RFI's cellular testing demand now comes from Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China. RFI's export growth achievement was recently marked by the Queen's Award for International Trade made for doubling its export revenue to £6m in only 3 years. The growth in East Asia has been a primary factor in RFI's investment decision for the region.

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