If you want to pick up a good deal, keep your ears open on the Bristol to Paddington line. Entrepreneur Simon Tucker was making this journey three years ago when he overheard Ric Hellerman, then head of Securicor’s digital research arm, volubly complaining about the parent company’s plan to sell the division.

Tucker sensed an opening and approached Hellerman before the train pulled in. The outcome was secure communications specialist Software Radio Technology (SRT), which is hoping to sweep the world, starting in China with Tetra, ‘Terrestrial Tracked Radio’, while scooping the western hemisphere with ‘AIS’, an automatic identification system for smaller boats that Tucker hopes will be made mandatory by the US Coastguard under Washington’s ‘homeland security’ regime.

The persuasive Tucker obtained ‘seed’ funding for SRT – which has now parted company with Hellerman – from former Tory minister Lord Baker, ex-Motherwell Football Club chairman John Boyle and others. They provided an early chunk of the £14 million that SRT has spent on developing Tetra, both before and after its 2005 AIM flotation.
SRT’s strength is its small, patented, Austrian-made chip, without which none of its devices could be made to work. The company has lost nearly £2 million in the past 18 months, but Tucker argues that contracts with the multi-million-strong Chinese and Korean armed forces and police, as well as American AIS contracts, could far outweigh that – he speaks of £20 million annual turnover.

Software Radio Technology	AIM	£10.03m	10.25p	0.00p
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Other company articles:
SRT wins Lifeboat support			02/08/2007
Strangers on a train			03/04/2007
Software Radio seeks new funds			29/03/2007
Profits in sight, says SRT			07/03/2007
In the Hot Seat with Sally Giles			08/08/2006