The Italian railroad company Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI) has placed an order with Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (IC Mobile) to install a complete GSM-Rail (GSM-R) mobile radio network along 7 500km of track.
The 168 million euro order covers a period of three years, with the network scheduled to go into operation in 2005.
Siemens has already been successfully operating a test network for this project on the Prato-Florence-Arezzo high-speed route since 1997. Once installed, the turnkey commercial mobile radio network will include the full range of GSM-R network technology: switching systems and intelligent networks for the core network; base station systems and radio links for the radio network.
The contract between Siemens IC Mobile and RFI also includes maintenance service and setting up the entire system to be GPRS-enabled.
GSM-R networks, used by railroad companies for internal mobile radio, cater for both voice and data transmission. On the one hand, this technology allows railroad employees on trains and along the route to communicate with each other, and on the other it also permits voice and data to be exchanged between trains, signalling systems, and other parts of the rail network.
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