Hugo is a part of the Poynting Antennas team in Europe. He is Telecommunications Engineer by trade and started his career as a Project Manager, managing and deploying Wireless Projects in particular.
Hugo joined the brand following his strong belief that connectivity is the building block of the booming technological world we live in, regardless of the use case. Poynting cares about making connectivity reliable and he truly shares that vision.
Tell us a little about the history of Poynting:
Poynting started as a consultancy in 1996, evolving to an antenna manufacturer later in 2001. In the beginning, Defence and Military were manufactured alongside the Commercial antennas and all sold under the same brand, Poynting Antennas. Having our roots in the military and defence environment really shaped who we are and what we do.
Headquartered in South Africa, the group now has a global footprint with branch offices in Europe and in the US, manufacturing facilities in South Africa and in China, where it also has a local warehouse to better serve the APAC region. Poynting Antennas reaches its market through value added distributors, including NetXL. Today, the team consists of more than 100 people with a single focus: providing highly reliable antenna solutions to deliver the most stable and consistent wireless connection.
What makes Poynting different?
Poynting has always had a great focus on the electrical design of each of its antennas. Contrary to a number of other manufacturers, the radiation pattern of our antennas take precedence over the gain and this focus has led us to always challenge the status quo. This led to over 70 patents on antenna design techniques we currently hold.
We completely develop our own antennas, from R&D until production. Everything we show on our datasheets are truly measured antenna parameters. It’s a “what you see is what you get” mentality!
The carefully selected build materials, inside and out, make Poynting antennas incredibly sturdy. A variety of our antennas offer: e-marked certification; IP69K & IK10 ratings; UV protection; salt-spray resistance; and an anti-vandalism design. Our antennas are ready for any environment and last for several years.
Our roots are in creating wideband antennas, electrically optimised to provide better gain throughout each of its working frequency bands. Catering for all these frequencies means every single 4G and 5G network in the world will be supported, and picked up, by our antennas!
Finally, we design our products so there’s almost zero margin for error when manufacturing, transporting and deploying them. This comes from thorough design processes and serious quality controls on all steps involved in creating the final product. This is the only way to ensure that each antenna is absolutely flawless.
What is the most important thing to consider when choosing your antenna?
There are a number of important aspects of an antenna, such as Gain and VSWR. However, there is NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT than its radiation pattern.
How predictable is the performance of the antenna? How stable is the connection that the user will experience? Every antenna manufacturer will talk about how high the gain on their antenna is. Not us. We opt for quality over quantity.
Radiation patterns are an antenna's Citizen Card. It’s what tells you who that antenna is. How will it behave once installed and commissioned. This is crucial regardless of the application, but a good visual example would be installations on vessels and vehicles. In these scenarios, for example, the antenna will constantly be moving, so it needs to have exactly the same performance no matter the direction as the position of the masts is unpredictable!
