End of year figures…
As most of you are aware, the end of our financial year was 31 August and although I do not as yet have the finalised figures for August - indeed the whole year will not be audited until October - the first indications are excellent and point to yet another record breaking year!
   I anticipate that our turnover will have increased by something approaching £7million on the previous year - that is £7million of extra work that we have put in the back of member’s taxis this year alone. When you take into account that last year’s turnover increased by £5.6million on the previous year, you can see how extraordinarily well we have done during these past two years.
   Turnover last year increased by 15.6% over the previous year and I am anticipating a further increase this year of around another 17% above that figure - a really fantastic achievement. Adding that all up, it means that over the past two years, the amount of work Dial-a-Cab have completed will have increased by approximately 32.5% over the 2005 figure. At the risk of repeating myself, that is an absolutely staggering achievement and means that our turnover has increased by almost a third over a two-year period!
   However, as I wrote earlier, August’s figures have not been processed and the year as a whole year has not been audited, but the above figures are going to be very - very - close to the final audited accounts, making it once again an extremely remarkable year with the surplus after depreciation probably reaching seven figures or thereabouts

Signal problems…
We had some problems in the evenings with our signals during the recent tube strike due to the volume of work that was going through the system. The system was operating very slowly, which is obviously very frustrating for members and even more so when a trip you would like cannot be accepted.
   What was interesting is that when 21.00hrs arrived, the

system began to return to normal although we were still very busy.
What was the reason for that? Well, no prizes if you guessed that the return to normality was
because the Finsbury (EC5) came into operation and work in the
City (and on the Island) all became As Directed. Consequently, rejections decreased dramatically and there was less work going back and forth and things gradually began to return to normal.
   Before someone tries to read something into the above that isn’t there, it is offered as an explanation and not as an excuse. Above all, we do not intend to change the way we despatch work! However, what is apparent is that as soon as we cut the rejections down, everything improves.
   We are constantly striving to improve signals and as you can see by reference to the previous topic, we have to improve just to stand still! To this end, we have deleted some back-up zones from their primary zones if we consider that back-up zone as being too far to run to the primary. That will help in cutting down on some of the unnecessary traffic offers going through the system.
   We have also moved and been testing our voice channel with data on top of the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane in an attempt to improve signals. For this improved channel to work, all taxis will have to have an upgrade to their terminals. So far, approximately 150 cabs have been upgraded and the initial signs are very encouraging regarding the Hilton site.
   We have also started to make plans for new terminals and part of those will be that we will have a dual modem that will initially seek out our private network, and if

that is not forthcoming will automatically switch to a public GPRS system that will ensure nationwide coverage at most times.
   If we were to totally move to GPRS, that would be at some considerable cost and we would be in a position that if the public network were to go down, then we would be out of business! Consequently, I believe the best option is to despatch on our private network and use the GPRS network as a backup when our own network cannot send or receive to any mobile. We would keep the traffic on GPRS network to a minimum, thereby minimising the cost of using that network. For any mobile to switch automatically between the two systems would take just milliseconds, but we believe things will improve enormously. I am led to believe that one of our competitors is going totally GPRS early in the New Year and it will be interesting to see how they fare.
   As you can see from the above and of course the increase in the volume of our work, our system at most times is very busy, however, as you can also see we are doing everything we can to improve the situation regarding signals. If the solution was that easy, it would have been resolved by now!
   Consequently, I do sometimes get a little irritated when Call Sign receives derogatory letters regarding our system from people who just seem to want to criticise, but do not offer any constructive comments - and if they do have a problem, why write to the magazine? Is it an attempt to discredit us when they could so easily write to me directly in the first place? As I stated earlier, I get extremely frustrated when we are working flat out to improve things and we just get constant criticism from that tiny minority. You will understand better when you get to the letters page – or have you already read that page first!

Brian Rice
Chairman
Dial-a-Cab