JVCKENWOOD USA (JKUSA) and EF Johnson Technologies (EFJohnson) recently announced a corporate realignment, with EFJohnson focusing on P25 technology and JKUSA leading deployments of NXDN and DMR solutions, as well as housing the Kenwood Integrated Solutions division.

JVCKENWOOD USA Executive Vice President and General Manager Mark Jasin said the realignment provides both JKUSA and EFJohnson with a “clearer definition of purpose” that should help both entities—each an affiliate of Japan-based JVCKENWOOD—compete within the land-mobile-radio (LMR) marketplace.

“The separation really is the technologies and markets that are being targeted,” Jasin said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “EF Johnson specializes in conventional P25 trunking to public safety, and they’re going to continue to do that. JKUSA will focus on NXDN and DMR at three levels—2.0, 2.5 and 3. Our [JVCKENWOOD USA] target markets will continue to be what they are—education, hospitality, general business-industrial, and rural public safety.

“Putting the focus of technology and markets within each company allows us to compete better in the marketplace with our primary competitors.”

Mitch Urbanczyk, chief revenue officer for EF Johnson Technologies, a JVCKENWOOD company, echoed this sentiment, noting that EFJohnson will continue to be the “center of excellence for P25” within JVCKENWOOD.

EFJohnson President and CEO Duane Anderson agreed.

“With this strategic realignment, EFJohnson is better positioned than ever to deliver unified, P25-based solutions that serve the mission-critical needs of public safety professionals,” Anderson said in a prepared statement. “As JVCKENWOOD’s P25 Center of Excellence, we’re focused on delivering innovation, reliability, and systemwide resilience that our customers can depend on—day in and day out.”

Under the new corporate alignment, EFJohnson no longer sell NEXEDGE technology anymore, but it did announce plans to let customers of its KENWOOD Viking 8000 series radios integrate NXDN to support greater interoperability with P25 users, Urbanczyk said.

“If a customer—such as paramedics or a hospital—deployed NXDN and needs to communicate with a public-safety agency that functions on a P25 system, the public-safety agency can use the VP8000 with the NXDN protocol in it to communicate with the medical staff on NXDN, for example, and vice versa,” Urbanczyk said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

Urbanczyk said this NXDN capability will be available on Viking 80000 series radios via a software upgrade, so entities will not need to purchase new hardware. Urbanczyk declined to provide a timeline for the NXDN capability being commercially available, but he said it will not require several years of development.

“It will be sooner than that, because of the fact that we have the presence of NXDN networks in the market, and many of our customers in public safety do want the capability of having their own [P25] network, as well as to be able to leverage an NXDN network in the area, as well, for their communications purposes,” Urbanczyk said.

Jasin noted that JKUSA announced the establishment of an Integrated Digital Wireless Solutions division a few weeks ago, which he said adds some important elements go the company’s ability to implement deployments of NXDN and DMR systems.

“They will specialize in the integration of these complete systems, including infrastructure and subscribers, as well as the other elements required to do all of that—bids and proposals, project management, contract negotiation, and all of that type of thing,” Jasin said.

“We had not done that since 2017, and we’re gaining that back from EF Johnson, [which] managed it for the last six or seven years.”

Jasin said he believes that the corporate realignment will have minimal impact on customers’ ability to do business with both entities.

“For customers in the channel—for example, dealers and resellers—and end users, it should be completely transparent,” Jasin said. “The name JVCKENWOOD is still out there. Both U.S. affiliates of JVCKENWOOD Japan share a channel, so a lot of the dealers will be the same; it’s really about who is providing the supply.”

Urbanczyk agreed, noting that he believes it will be “business as usual” for most customers. And if changes in business contacts occur because of the realignment, JKUSA and EFJohnson officials plan to “take care of that customer,” he said.