Europe’s leading high speed railway network operator is, by revenue, the world’s biggest rail operator. As the leading supplier of rail mobility and logistical services in the region, they transport over seven million people each day and carry more than 230 million tons of freight per year.
Covering around 33,000km of track and employing 340,000 employees, they operate and maintain the longest rail network in Europe. Not only the epitome of efficiency, but they’re also innovators in their field. In 2019 they setup a company entirely focussed on the digitalisation of their railway network.
Commencing in January 2020, this initiative started to bring together the technologies that will increase reliability and bring greater efficiency, create capacity, and improve environmental records across their rail operations. Through the adoption of 5G and technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Pilots that will become the future of the network, this leading railway network operator is laying the foundations for a new revolution in rail.
GSM-R Network Challenge
When faced with interconnect challenges between their private GSM-R communications network and the public switched telephony system via operator Deutsche Telekom, the railway network operator turned to Squire Technologies to provide the solution.
GSM-R networks or GSM networks for railways are a sub-system of the European Rail Traffic Management System. They manage communication between trains, operational and regulation control centres, and are critical to the safety and performance of the entire rail network. In the event of breakdowns and incidents the GSM-R network ensures that all communications, including safety and emergency communications are delivered and received between train drivers and operational systems at speeds of up to 500 km/h (310 mph).
This railway network operator’s GSM-R network relies on roaming interconnections with Deutsche Telekom. When the Deutsche Telekom upgraded to an all-IP network, the rail network operator required a solution that would provide a bi-directional interconnect between their private network and Deutsche Telekom’s IMS.
As specialists in cross generation interconnect and protocol conversion, the GSM-R SIP-ISUP conversion project played to all of Squire Technologies’ strengths. Squire Technologies signalling platform, “Sigla”, was deployed to manage the conversion between the different generation of networks to interconnect with Deutsche Telekom. The high degree of flexibility in Squire Technologies core network products meant they could comply with the highly stringent standards and particular specifications required by the German regulators to meet all the necessary safety standards involved in high-speed rail networks.
