‘Hoofddorp is our ideal business location’

6 July 2021

Amsterdam Airport City has been an attractive place for international companies for many years. Many companies opt for the municipality of Haarlemmermeer because of the central location in the Randstad and the excellent physical and digital accessibility. In addition to companies that focus on Schiphol and the transport and logistics sector, the municipality also offers companies from other sectors (ICT, Life Sciences & Health, Consumer Goods & Food and Energy) an excellent location in Haarlemmermeer. We talk to one of the newcomers from 2020: The Telecom company Tampnet, located at Beukenhorst-West in Hoofddorp.

Long-distance accessibility

“Tampnet was founded in 2001 in Norway. We operate the world's largest high-capacity offshore communications network in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico, serving customers in the oil and gas, wind energy, maritime and transportation sectors with first-class telecommunications.” The company is headquartered in Stavanger, Norway and has offices in the UK, the Netherlands, the US and Brazil, says Huib Fenenga, Country Manager at Tampnet in the Netherlands. “Reliable communication is very important offshore and nowadays, people are used to have a good mobile connection everywhere and at all the time and they also want that at sea. Previously, expensive satellite solutions were required to connect with employees on oil platforms and wind farms. Tampnet now provides a good network that reduces these costs.
The company came to the Netherlands because we concluded a deal with nine oil and gas companies for offshore communication. Based on this network, Tampnet was able to establish  a comprehensive 4G/LTE network on the Dutch Continantal Shelf.”

The Tampnet offshore network covers an area of more than 5,000 km2, which is comparable to the area of the province of Noord-Brabant. Now business users working at sea up to 300 kilometers from the Dutch coastline have mobile coverage, which is an extension of 285 kilometers. This is of tremendous benefit to people who work on oil and gas platforms, drilling rigs and wind farms, but also fishermen. They are able to use their mobile devices and work in the same way as on land.

Local accessibility

Tampnet has 130 employees worldwide and at the Dutch office “the eleventh employee was just hired yesterday”, Huib Fenenga laughs. He calls Hoofddorp an 'ideal location'. “It is a stone's throw from Schiphol, so we are easily accessible for our foreign colleagues and international relations. From Schiphol you can reach Hoofddorp in five minutes by train, and Beukenhorst-West is also within walking distance of the station. Next to our office is a hotel, where foreign visitors can stay overnight. Moreover, we are close to the highway and easily accessible by car. That is important for our visitors, but also for the employees.”

 The employees live all around the country: from Friesland and Zwolle to The Hague and Den Bosch. “During the Corona pandemic we work a lot from home, but it is also important to be able to be back at the office. Therefore good accessibility is very important.” At the moment the company has eleven employees, two are from the United Kingdom, two from Spain and the rest is from the Netherlands. All highly educated technical professionals with functions as network engineer, project manager, logistics manager or field engineer.

The North Sea plays a major role in the economy. Thousands of employees are active every day just in the Dutch part of the North Sea. They work not only in the oil and gas industry and maritime sector  but also in the wind energy sector. The importance of mobile communication at sea is increasing. Also due to the growing  digitalization of the industries that operate there. Haarlemmermeer is an excellent location for these types of innovative ICT companies.