Spoornet deploys Spescom telephony system

As with other rail service companies around the world, Spoornet is focused on safety first, then the business issues of productivity and cost savings. Its recent investment in Spescom systems is a pure example.

Spescom DataVoice is a market-leading provider of voice recording (VR) and communications solutions, with an impressive record of installations for major rail service providers both in SA and overseas.

The company's latest project for Spoornet involves over 40 sites nationwide, some of the major rail traffic control centres being equipped with redundancy systems, making a total of over 60 deployments of Spescom DataVoice VR systems in a multimillion-rand contract.

Technically, the system is a sophisticated solution to enable Spoornet to monitor and record the radio and telephony communications between control centres, rail-track engineers and the train drivers. The recording functionality has to cope with multimedia analogue input channels, which are then digitally stored.

The project represents a successful combination of Spescom's abilities and experience, adding new technology to the established networks and older systems Spoornet has in place, as Derrick Marais, senior engineer at Spoornet, explains.

"For Spoornet, this represents an investment in technology aimed at improving safety standards," says Marais. "It provides the latest techniques for recording of verbal authorisations to train drivers at all points in our national network, thereby enhancing our ability to ensure safe movement of trains."

The DataVoice system has proved to be a cost-effective and efficient solution, which has met all the requirements of Spoornet's specification. This included the highest security levels, the need for minimal human intervention in the running of the system and the ability to monitor control centres by remote access.

Andrew Condon, Spescom DataVoice commercial manager, points out some key factors involved in Spescom's winning this major tender.

"A deciding element was the fact that Spescom offers a locally developed product with easy access to support services," says Condon. "Adapting our DataVoice technology for use with radio, rather than the more usual telecoms systems, was just one of the challenges.

"In collaboration with the University of Stellenbosch and Transnet's own telecoms division, Transtel, we were able to integrate a variety of radio transmission technologies into a single system that channels all the communications through local hubs, simultaneously storing the messages for later reference.

"Needless to say, the efficient control of these radio messages is a critical factor in providing efficient rail transport at the highest possible safety levels. This ensures that the rail traffic flows smoothly and that any technical problems are immediately communicated and resolved.

"The system does not archive, but stores all records online for longer than six months to provide instant access to calls. Another advantage is that no operator intervention is required to administer archives of tapes."

Leroy Koen, Spoornet's maintenance engineer on this project, explains the problems resolved by the new system.

"The existing equipment used by Spoornet created a number of issues with efficiency and integration that were a hindrance to our control staff in terms of productivity," says Koen. "Technical development of the Spoornet control network made a new solution essential.

"There were four different existing VR systems, some of which had limited access to the fixed-line connections between centres and many of which were the old tape-based type. This created problems such as spares availability, inefficient archiving of recordings and cumbersome search procedures for locating specific records.

Spoornet considered a number of options before deciding on the Spescom solution, which was based on field-proven DataVoice Orion Lite and Orion Professional technology.

"We decided that even a DVD recording solution would present unnecessary expense problems for a national network with so many control centres," says Koen. "The best solution was to record onto hard drives to facilitate access to archived information and integration throughout the network. The flexibility of using either version of the Orion technology, depending on the size of the centre, also contributed to a cost-effective implementation.

"The ability of the Spescom system to communicate using standard Internet and Ethernet protocols allows a scalable approach to creating the essential network monitoring for remote management and automated system alarms."

Spoornet's specifications included the key aspects of recording radio communications that run on a GSM standard (global system for mobile communications) and converting these analogue inputs into digital records that can be efficiently stored and accessed.

This is achieved using adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM) or GSM coding. The ADPCM technology is an established conversion method, which draws on the proven PCM systems, used for digital telephony, operating at 16, 24 or 32Kbps coding rates. GSM coding is used in mobile networks and delivers excellent quality at 13.2Kbps coding rate.

"The radio interface was one technical issue," says Condon. "The two main elements after that were storage to meet the customer's needs for fast access and safe backup and then the configuration of the administration and control features of the system.

"Smaller sites using the Orion Lite solution handle 12 lines or less, but are expandable to 16 lines, including GSM, fax and voice telephony input channels. The larger train control offices (TCOs) use rack-mounted Orion Professional recorders, which can be expanded to handle 128 channels.

"This enabled us to provide Spoornet with a flexible, cost-saving solution. The system is controlled with a desktop interface connected either on-site or via the Spoornet Ethernet network, which can be set with up to 255 different access levels for as many as 1 024 users. This fully met the customer's need for network security.

"The Orion Light recorder has a primary 80GB IDE hard drive for storage of up to 13 200 hours of single-channel recording, while the Orion Professional recorder has a primary 72GB SCSI hard drive for storage of up to 11 800 hours of single-channel recording. These records can be accessed by authorised users on-site or for off-site playback with only a 17Kbps overhead on network resources. Each site is also equipped with UPS units for orderly shut-down in case of power failure."

The vast amount of information stored is easily accessed using date and name filters to organise fast searches in the database. Management controls and network administration are supported with high-tech abilities to e-mail sound files in WAV format and export log reports in Excel documents.

"The specifications are very rigorous," says Condon. "For Spoornet, the safe and efficient running of its services depends on exceptional levels of communications, with all the monitoring and management functions that implies.

"From the complex, multimedia front-end to the secure, accessible back-end storage, the DataVoice technology has, however, met all the requirements while still providing excellent productivity and cost-saving benefits for the customer."