Frequentis was awarded a contract by the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency (now Väylä) in 2016, with implementation due in 2017. On February 4, the company said Finnish railway users can now use Virve, the Finnish Public Safety digital Tetra radio network, and public mobile networks for all railway-specific communication functionalities, allowing greater flexibility to follow the future evolution of the networks and ensuring less dependency on one specific communication standard. Raili, Finland’s GSM-R network, has been used for operational voice communications in rail transport in Finland since 2008. However, the systems were reaching the end of their life and increased interference from commercial mobile networks due to the introduction of new broadband 3G and 4G technologies was the trigger to search for an alternative communication solution. Urca uses Virve to provide a national rail voice communications and dispatch system based on Frequentis’ bearer-independent architecture. The contract also included voice recording and a special smartphone application, called Rapli, which allows the use of the rail-specific functions on the public mobile networks. Train radio has to be Tetra radio based under an EU derogation, but all other mobile users can choose between Tetra or the public mobile network. “Urca is an end-to-end solution, based on the Frequentis fixed terminal rail voice communication system, FTS 3020,” says Frequentis vice-president public transport, Mr Thomas Karl. “It enables the use of the Tetra based network, as well as public mobile networks, including broadband networks in the future, with a rail feature set to provide an entirely new set of options beyond GSM-R. The FTS 3020 is the ultimate migration platform towards the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS).”