Founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of a Jersey-registered holding company, Syntec UK Ltd was purchased by its management in March 2003 and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of IJC Telecommunications Ltd, a UK registered company which is entirely owned and financed by its Directors; the group owns all its equipment outright and carries no third-party debt. The group is truly independent having neither external shareholders nor finance, and having only normal commercial relationships with other operators, carriers and equipment manufacturers.
The Directors of IJC Telecommunications Ltd are:-
Jonathan Graham - MD & Financial Director
The first 20 years of Jonathan's career was spent in the construction and leisure industries, which included using James Campbell's R&D services in the 1980s. In 1997, he commenced a four-year engagement with Advent Venture Partners where he developed new accounting, investment monitoring, reporting and transaction control systems and practices. This work included investment performance reporting for a substantial number of early and development stage portfolio companies, across a wide range of technologies, including communications, and at various stages of business development. Jonathan then went on to provide consultancy services to certain other venture capital management houses; and was approached by other members of the Board for advice on the contemplated MBO of Syntec. Jonathan joined Syntec in March 2003, becoming MD in October 2004 upon acquiring a significant equity stake in the business. He is also responsible for the financial and administrative functions of the business, and for commercial management of carrier and supplier relationships.
James Campbell - Operations Director
James has worked in telecommunications and electronics for some 30 years. He built his first switch (then known as an exchange!) in the 1970s, and was the lead engineer for the development of ethernet signalling hardware in the UK in the 1980s. He also co-led the development of a card-fraud prevention mechanism using radio-paging networks with Colin Westlake, and led the R&D team which developed the first portable solid-state sound recording and replay equipment in the world. Through his own R&D business, he was instrumental in the development and deployment of selective tone calling for use on UK private mobile radio networks, and developed a range of telemetry systems using both fixed and mobile telecoms networks for a UK water authority. More recently he has designed and implemented the Patientphone NHS bedside telephony system (originally operated by Syntec, now sold to a specialist operator), and was one of the two founder members of Syntec. James is the senior engineer responsible for switching and transmission.
Colin Westlake - Development Director
Colin started writing software in the early 70's, when the only computers were mainframes and programs were input on punched tape. At the start of the 80's, he co-led the development of a patented card-fraud prevention mechanism using the paging network with James Campbell. He spent the 80's working in the oil industry for Schlumberger in Central and South America where he led small teams collecting and analyzing well-bore data in real time on PDP11s and Micro VAX array processors. During his time with Schlumberger in Brazil, he developed a down-hole fluid sample analysis tool which has now been commercialised and is in widespread use. Colin moved from oil to the hospitality industry in the 1990's, where working in a Unix / SQL environment he developed extensions to the Remanco POS system. In 1998 the falling cost of computing power and the rising cost of call handling prompted Colin to co-found the Pocket Oracle project, researching towards a fully capable automated speech-recognition portal which would eventually replace call centres for many functions. The telephony services for the project were provided by Syntec, and gradually Colin was persuaded to forsake research for commerce, initially in a consultancy role, becoming a full-time member of the management team prior to the MBO. Colin is the senior engineer responsible for data processing and billing, and leads the platform development team.
Registered offices of Syntec UK Ltd and IJC Telecommunications Ltd: 18 The Avenue, London, W13 8PH
Syntec UK Ltd registered in England and Wales #3529985
IJC Telecommunications Ltd registered in England and Wales # 4690987
Group VAT registration number GB 810 3099 63.
The Communications Service Provider supplying the communications services described in this website is Syntec UK Ltd, the issued and fully paid-up ordinary share capital of which is £0.35 million.
