BELGIUM’s national infrastructure manager Infrabel has announced that it has successfully completed the infrastructure migration of its GSM-R core communications network from R99 TDM to R4 voice over IP.  

The migration project, carried out over 24 months by Kontron, is expected to improve efficiency and reliability and availability of communications on the Belgian network, reducing risks of traffic disruption due an unavailability of the data transmission service. 

The work was carried out under a 15-year contract awarded by Infrabel to Kapsch CarrierCom (now Kontron) in 2019, which covered the network design, supply, installation and maintenance of the new communications equipment, including providing compliance with ETCS Level 2.  

Kontron and Infrabel jointly developed, validated and implemented a set of migration procedures for the upgrades to minimise potential disruption.