HUNGARIAN State Railways (MAV) has awarded a Forints 58.8bn ($US 212m) contract for the second phase of its national GSM-R rollout to a consortium of construction contractor R-Kord and telematics company I-Cell Mobilsoft.

POLISH track authority PKP PLK has awarded Nokia and its partners Herkules, Pozbud and Wasko a five-year contract to deploy GSM-R and a mission-critical backhaul network across the Polish railway network.

THE Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) will supersede GSM-R as the industry’s standard telecommunications system in the 2020s, potentially bringing “game-changing” capability. But as Keith Barrow reports from Paris, a well-defined migration plan and adequate spectrum allocation will be vital to a successful transition.

IRJ at the UIC World Conference on Rail Transport Telecoms, Paris: Key European rail bodies have stressed that the industry will need to make a clear and robust case for its future radio spectrum requirements as it works to develop a successor to GSM-R.

Work is underway to lay the framework for a new standardised railway telecommunications network to replace GSM-R beginning in 2021 or 2022. But as Kevin Smith discovers, a great deal of uncertainty persists over the technology that this new network will use and whether the railway sector is ready to replace its existing 2G networks.

EUROTUNNEL inaugurated its new GSM-R network for the Channel Tunnel on September 29 following the completion of a €48m, six-year project.