If you’re looking for an expert view on passenger information, you should take a look at the latest International Railway Journal (IRJ) issue – the article ‘A new age of communication’.  Niren Choudhury, Global Director for Strategic Industries at Alcatel-Lucent explains that telecom technology is providing railway operators with more opportunities to connect and interact with passengers than ever before, as well as significant benefits for enhancing their operations.

In this article, he also recommends creating scalable communication infrastructure which provides sufficient bandwidth for current and future needs – the required network-based platform to create a comprehensive and integrated passenger information system, to keep up with evolution and to provide continuous value to both operators and passengers!

> Enjoy reading the IRJ’s article: ‘A new age of communication’ (Page 45)

Olivier Andre, Vice President of Business Development for Transportation with Alcatel-Lucent, features in the latest edition of Railway Gazette International. In December’s “Viewpoint” column, Olivier argues that, with GSM-R starting to approach obsolescence, the time is now for railways to begin plans for deploying it’s replacement – 4G/LTE – for both commercial and safety-critical functions.

Thanks to Nick Kingsley (follow him on Twitter @njak_100) at Railway Gazette for permission to republish this article.

Read the article



By the TrackTalk team

Commercial LTE networks are already coming on stream in many countries and within a few years high-speed mobile broadband will be an everyday commodity for millions of people around the world. 4G will also have a transformative effect on the railways, allowing multiple operational functions to be consolidated into a single transmission network.

In the latest issue of TrackTalk we consider how rail operators can meet public expectations of onboard broadband in the 4G age, and how LTE will bring new levels of flexibility to many aspects of rail operations.

TrackTalk examines recent research in Belgium, which sheds new light on customer expectations of onboard WiFi services, and we look at how the Tecrail project is helping Spanish infrastructure manager Adif to map a route to LTE implementation. We also talk to Simon Bowyer of Mott MacDonald about how railways can develop strategies for implementing onboard 4G connectivity.

Read this issue of the TrackTalk e-newsletter

Let’s connect with a new rail magazine called ‘Urban transport Agenda’. In its first edition, Olivier André, Vice President for Transport at Alcatel-Lucent explains the new role of the company to transform the passenger experience with advanced multimedia applications to be informed, entertained, and stay always connected. Additionally, the telecom expert is engaged to “work closely with rail operator s to help them extract more value from telecoms by providing concrete business benefits over and above the essential operational uses they have for telecoms technologies… We have demonstrated our skills in deploying competitive end-to-end solutions integrating many sub-systems and our customers trust us.”

For more, check out A Personal Connection.

Over the past decade, commercial telecommunication services have evolved to IP-based technologies delivering wire and wireless broadband connectivity and leading to the explosion of Internet, smartphones and new technologies.

What could we learn from this transformation? It’s one of the questions addressed by Alcatel-Lucent at its booth (133 – Hall 4.1). You will learn how to move smoothly and securely from legacy technology, TDM or circuit switched telephony to a flexible, scalable and unified IP infrastructure and fully benefit from multimedia applications.

Read More…

Improving safety in a complex environment with ever changing numbers of passengers – with increased expectations – and a shifting environment, is still a relevant and hot topic at Innotrans 2012.

Therefore, rail operators are stopping by the Alcatel-Lucent booth (133 – hall 4.1) to discover a new generation communication dispatching platform called ICCC (Integrated Communications for Control Centers) with an interactive multimedia whiteboard, a great innovation in the safety & security management field. Read More…

Could the train be an extension of my office, my home, my social spaces? This is one of the questions asked by more and more passengers. With comfort and security considered as a given, they expect now to be informed, entertained and remain productive.

The good news is that new technologies are future-ready! Location services, geo-fencing, e-ticketing, e-couponing, augmented reality, digital signage, multimedia information kiosks, on-board infotainment services and multimodal information, combined with innovative business models, revolutionize the passenger journey.

Read More…

In this ever competitive world, guaranteeing security and safety in trains and stations, improving efficiency of operations and delivering added value services to passengers, remain key objectives of the industry and the good news is that broadband applications could address all of them.

The 4G (4^th Generation) mobile communication technology named also as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) has matured to a point that it can now be tested in rail environments to assess its value. Alan Hadden, President of the GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association), underlined last May: “52 operators launched commercial LTE service in the past 12 months and dozens more operators are preparing to commercially launch LTE networks this year. With hundreds of LTE user devices available now, addressing all market segments with fast subscriptions growth, LTE will enter a new phase as a mainstream technology in 2012.”

This commercial off-the-shelf technology presents many key advantages for the Railways Industry:

• High spectral efficiency leading to transmission speeds of up to 150 Mbps over the air (down link) enabling the deployment of new on board infotainment services and very high speed internet access
• Full IP based allowing to optimize networks into a single converged (fixe and mobile) IP network platform
• Low latency (down to 10 ms), perfect to support highly time sensitive applications and provide high levels of Quality of Services (QoS) management.
• Flexible technology to be deployed in different frequency bands (existing 2G, 3G and 4G bands, but also the 400 MHz band used in many countries for professional mobile radio (PMR) communications). LTE can accommodate different channel bandwidths (1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz) in accordance with the available amount of spectrum. Assuming a 5 MHz channel, LTE delivers peak rates per cell of 36 Mbps in downlink and 8 Mbps in the uplink.
• Fully secured and resilient including encryption, authentication and auto-reconfiguration features.

The list could be long, so if you are interested in experiencing LTE for railways in action, visit Alcatel-Lucent booth 133 – hall 4.1 at InnoTrans from 18 to 21 Sept. 2012, in Berlin. And see you there!

Thierry Sens,

Director, EMEA Marketing

Strategic Industries Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent

On July 26, David Meyer reported in ZDNet on the major launch of 2G and 3G services in the Channel Tunnel (Mobile services going live in the Channel Tunnel ahead of Olympics). Travelers on their way to England via high speed trains such as the Eurostar, will now be able to use their cell phones and access on-board infotainment during the 35 minute crossing of the tunnel. Thanks to Alcatel-Lucent, in cooperation with Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Eurotunnel, this technological feat was achieved in record time and under tight time constraints.

This success was underlined by Jacques Gounon, Chairman and Chief Executive of Eurotunnel Group who said “Eurotunnel is proud to be able regularly to improve the services we offer to our customers through major technological innovation, this time based on the expertise of Alcatel-Lucent.”

Many challenges had to be overcome to provide wireless service at 100 meters below sea level for the 20 plus million passengers traveling the 53 km tunnel annually. A technically complex project, carried out in a very short timeframe (less than 10 months), required meticulous management of work especially since the traffic in the Channel Tunnel (which is 24 hours a day 365 days a year) continued for the duration of the installation.

Elsewhere, the confined environment required a very strict adherence of standards for the various components of the GSM-P Alcatel-Lucent solution. Alcatel-Lucent had to comply with EHS Standards (Health, Safety and Environment) on the use of new generation radiating cables, especially concerning smoke and fire standards. Without forgetting the constraints of wave propagation in the tunnel and radio coverage which proved very complex, trains occupy the largest part of the tunnel as they pass and act as real “Faraday cages”, causing penetration of the radio signal thus making it weaker. Special treatment of the signals was therefore necessary to obtain a good quality of transmission, particularly within the trains. In the end, Alcatel-Lucent teams had to offer new solutions so that different radio systems could coexist in the Tunnel (i.e. GSM, R GSM-P, and the “Tactics System” used by firefighters).

After 10 months of hard work, the result equaled expectations. Thanks to the GSM-P system deployed by Alcatel-Lucent, Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom are now able to offer their customers seamless access to GSM and 3G services in the South Tunnel (direction France/Britain). Coverage in the North Tunnel (direction Britain/France) will be completed by British telecommunications operators after the Olympic Games.

> Read the Press release

On 10 July, an inauguration ceremony was held for the new control center for the railway line between the southern cities of Plovdiv and Svilengrad in Bulgaria. This is the latest milestone in this project, signed in 2008, where Thales and Alcatel-Lucent are supplying Bulgarian State Railways with rail-signaling and telecommunications gear. Alcatel-Lucent is providing the integrated telecommunication solutions, including the multiservice network, GSM-R, public address systems, and passenger information displays.

Read More…