Veteran chief executive Tom Sime — at the helm of his technology company for 35 years — shows little sign of slowing down, as he looks for acquisitions to bolt on to his expanding business.

Kirkintilloch-based Exchange Communications has two strands of business: it supplies Cloud-based telephony for businesses and organisation, transforming the way they work and reducing cost, and it also delivers 5G networks for SME and major organisations, making buildings smarter through its cellular communications systems.

This second strand is where Sime sees massive opportunity – predicting more than 10 per cent growth a year – and is actively looking at opportunities.  His company already has a roster of contracts for jobs in Europe in 2027.

The mobile phone was originally designed for use outside, when people were in the street or in transit. Now over 80 per cent of mobile calls are made inside buildings including offices or even in tunnels. The company creates high-capacity, encrypted networks in smart buildings known as a Distributed Antennae System (DAS), which deploy radio antennae in the ceiling giving integrated 5G levels of bandwidth and coverage.

“This allows us to connect smart things and it allows our clients to run the building more efficiently so it can monitor and control energy usage, the lighting and security systems, and also allow staff to use their own mobile devices with maximum coverage,” he explains.

EXCHANGE HAVE  PUT CELLULAR INTO 70% OF UK AIRPORT

“We’re fulfilling a need for those working in modern buildings and offices. Individual staff often use their own devices of choice at work. This is fine for us. That’s where we step in with DAS.”

The mobile networks, such as VodafoneThree, EE, and 02, allow their external mobile links to be connected to Exchange’s on-site radio equipment which becomes a single point of entry that handles calls from any of the networks inside the agreed building.

Such secure DAS systems, which can be adapted on single floors in multi-storeyed office blocks, are now the major part of Exchange’s expanding business.

“We’ve done 70 per cent of the UK’s airports and we are the biggest provider. We do banks, such as JP Morgan, and we are doing transport tunnels. We’ve just completed an eleven-month project on the Mersey Tunnel. Now there is cellular coverage for health and safety and for public information for smart motor traffic.”

The company is about to put the same technology into the Clyde Tunnel in Glasgow.

Major generation project such as the Battersea Power station development in London, and a new five-star Mayfair hotel, are now running DAS systems which handles IPOS and restaurant bookings, put in by Exchange’s team.

Exchange Communications also delivered an upgrade of connectivity at St David Dewi Sant, Cardiff, one of Wales’ busiest shopping malls.

“We are smart enabling all of these places for the future,” he says. “St David’s is a superb example of how smart building solutions, powered by 5G, can transform the way retail and leisure spaces operate. By leading this project, we’ve created a connected environment that delivers faster connections, richer customer engagement, and smarter, safer operations for the centre.”

CELLULAR IS STILL GROWING ACROSS EUROPE

He sees the growth in cellular systems helping to grow economic productivity.

“This is growing exponentially. There are lots of buildings with no cellular coverage, so we’re planning for much more business across the UK, and we’re moving into Europe too, where there is a massive opportunity. We are looking at an acquisition in the next 18 months.”

Sime is the perpetual salesman. A dapper Scot in dark suit, blue shirt and tie, he jokes he was once visiting an international bank in the City of London and asked to remove his tie so he wouldn’t be mistaken for a consultant with pad and pen looking to cull headcount.

“I started the company. We’ve always been front-edge early adopters. We deploy things that make a difference to businesses, rather than just put in the same old stuff.”

In 1990, the company began installing traditional telephone systems into major offices. These could be used for the customer service centre activity of that time, but since then there has been massive evolution with this technology ‘cascading’ down to smaller companies.

Furthermore, the widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence makes improve customer service tools available to every company, he says.

“You used to have very sophisticated systems in with CRM but a lot of the stuff out of the book from the likes of Zoom, at very little extra costs, have changed the goalposts.”

Using the likes of Content Guru, this can be for around £14 a month. This means calls can be analysed by AI, giving a welter of customer information which takes interpretation out of the call and puts science being it.

It examines the conversation, segments it, and allows companies to gear up their next interaction with that customer, he explains.

“It does the full analysis. You might think it is a bit Big Brother but it is all driven by improving customer service.”

How does he square this with the discussion about massive job losses cause by the implementation of AI?

“The AI Agent doesn’t replace you, it becomes your co-worker. In some sections, it will replace people’s jobs, but if you think of it as a co-worker then this will dynamically change how people feel about it. People are scared of AI, but if it becomes your co-worker, it will be your best friend,” he explains.

The human will be able to handle more, become more valuable to an employer, and there will be less burn-out, he believes.

“Employee satisfaction is directly linked to customer satisfaction.”

“Almost everything we supply now is cloud based. 4G and 5G is the way forward. The ever-green licence you use are easily upgraded, so that’s so easy and you never fall behind.”

Exchange is agnostic working with all the UK mobile operators who constantly invest to improve mobile coverage. This was recently highlighted by the £11bn VodafoneThree investment programme, which includes bringing 5G SA to 99.95% of the population by 2034, demonstrating the market will have continued growth over the next decade.

Tom Sime is coy about the company’s turnover and says there has been significant year of year growth over the last few years.

“I own the business and I don’t have any others owners, which I think is unique, and I quite like it that way. I’ve got a long established management team in both sectors of our business. They love what they are doing. The staff seem to like it because they can get to someone who can make a decision.”

“Exchange Communications, on average, works on contracts between £500,000 and £10m per year, delivering solutions for global companies including Meta and JP Morgan, and across a varied range of sectors,” he adds.

There is plenty more to come for this polo-playing entrepreneur.