The early days
of RFL Communications
Vysiion - then known as RFL Communications, was originally founded in 1996, under the direction of Peter Clapton, Phil Whitehead, and Steve Fabray. Armed with minimal funds and an ambitious business plan, they immediately began punching above their weight, with plenty of late nights and long-distance travel ensuring that the first contracts were the kind of ambitious projects that would typically have been awarded to more established providers, such as:
Delivering 120 teleprotection devices for the Qatar electricity company, to be deployed across the Ras Laffan gas field (infamous as a consequence of the current USA / Iran conflict).
Installing a remote access solution across all National Grid's UK sites.
Providing a new comms system for the Manchester metro, following a competitive bid process that include some of the UK's leading communications providers.
The success of these initial projects, secured in the first two years of trading, provided Vysiion with a strong foundation to establish themselves as a serious competitor in a complex field, earning the accreditations needed to undertake even more ambitious projects. All the while, early profits were reinvested into the company and growing the team, with administrator, head of QSHE and compliance, and occasional project manager Jane Lockwood the first to join the business.
Keen to expand beyond teleprotection deployments, Vysiion began broadening its capabilities in the buildup to the millennium, particularly around the design, install, and commission of fibre networks and microwave radio systems for power plant projects across the world, with teams active in Brunei, Brazil, Uruguay, Belize, St Lucia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Poland, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Azerbaijan.
