Helmut K?chler - role model, a mover

Innovation and action, decision and vision always depend on people. One who has driven secure communication for more than 50 years has passed away. We mourn the loss of Helmut Koechler.

Helmut Koechler was the initiator and founder of the Swissphone Group based in Switzerland and in 2000 also co-founder of the e*Message Group in Germany and France. Helmut realised that alerting and two-way communication are just as much two pairs of shoes as the need to call to the scene of the crisis event without any hesitation and then - when the first responders are there - to exchange information on the spot.

Helmut was not only Swiss and German and French. Helmut was European. He was one of the strongest movers of the European EPPA group that promoted paging and critical communication internationally. Also with the development of his own standard - rubbing a bit against Motorola's activities - the ERMES. No longer talked about today, but all the products and services of e*Message and Swissphone that save lives and move the industry forward every day.

Helmut went into the markets that were for others "too small" compared to the mass market. Yes, you can sell more cars than fire engines. But, what is "more" needed?

Take Germany, for example: Deutsche Telekom had a well-developed paging network, but it was designed for mass private use and used the frequencies differently than the fire brigades needed.

So, together with the users, a network organisation was created for many German fire brigades, which did not use the incumbent Telekom, but their own networks with terminals from Swissphone Group - or later - the e*BOS services of its co-enterprise e*Message Deutschland with terminals that also came from Europe - often from TPL Systèmes , but also from others.

I have known Helmut since the 90s. As managing director of the market-leading Regiokom Berlin (later Deutschland) GmbH, we took over from Sprintel (also an initiative of Helmut) the trunked radio networks according to MPT1327 in three of the 14 priority regions awarded by the regulatory authority at that time, including the one in the Rhine-Main region.

Thus and further completed, the shareholders of Regiokom were able to place trunked radio in the hands of a globally investing company from Canada in 1999. With advantages for service and for a good return of the European shareholders, which included Barthold von Ribbentrop and Dietmar Gollnick.

The shareholders invested part of the funds generated in the acquisition of the each countrywide POCSAG (paging, NP2M) activities of the German and French telecoms. The "big players" wanted to take care of the millions of private customers with their many cell phones. Thus, the alerting service came back into close and professionally concentrated hands. Barthold von Ribbentrop and Dietmar Gollnick would never have dared to undertake this activity if they had not been able to add to their special mobile radio, financial and operational expertise, in the form of Helmut K?chler, the necessary special expertise in paging that was a leader in Europe.

Helmut K?chler, Barthold von Ribbentrop and Dietmar Gollnick, together with their families, were the founders and are still shareholders of e*Message Wireless Information Services GmbH in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg.

With not only one crying eye, Helmut has ensured excellent succession arrangements. In 2019, the Swissphone Group went to the Rigeto-Group in Munich, thus becoming rather even more "German" than it had been before.

In 2022, with greater participation of Dietmar Gollnick , the transfer of the operational e*Message companies in France and Germany to the Liberta Group (also in Munich) was completed. e*Message WIS GmbH supports the technology and market positioning of the (now former) subsidiaries in the two main continental European countries. See also CRITICAL MESSAGING ASSOCIATION and #ZOES for more information.

?Helmut K?chler was a great entrepreneur. His living place gave him the honorary name "Bill Gates". Without Helmut, many initiatives for second secured and specialized infrastructure and terminals would not have been so successful.

Helmut died after a long illness on Christmas Eve 2022. He was a super husband to Erika, great father to Corina, Cecile and Michael. His children were and are also my colleagues as co-founders of the e*Message group.

Helmut, I bow down to you. Learned a lot from you. Much tried to implement from your spoken and unspoken suggestions.

Our in e*Message and CMA and especially my deeply connected with our friendship greetings to your wife, children and grandchildren. My deepest condolences and the certainty that much of what Helmut K?chler created in his life will continue to be important after his lifetime. Some things - for example the principle of always having a second infrastructure - will become even stronger.

Thank you, Helmut. Take care. Deepest possible bow.

?

Your friend Dietmar

#Crisis #Prevention #Swissphone #Pagers #CriticalMessaging #Entrepreneur #Mittelstand #Initiator #Moover #GreatGuy #France #Germany #Switzerland #Zurich #POCSAG #Feuerwehr #Alarm #RIP #MobileRadio #P25 #5G #cnspf2023 #pompiers

c/c Carsten Hofmann Vincent Delpont Angelo W. S. Manfred Piontek Sebastian von Ribbentrop Patrick von Ribbentrop Gert Jan R. Wolf e*Message France Zimmermann Philipp Nils von Wietzlow Liberta Partners Rigeto Unternehmerkapital Thierry Gauthier Dr. Richard K. Lenz Anke Lüders-Gollnick Jens K?hler Robert Schumacher David Asenkat Peter Clemons Dr. Peter Franke Dr. Christian Szczesny Isaac Vega Tapia