Nokia
A New Platform for Rail Communications
Adopting 5G for Railways
5G offers a major opportunity for rail operators to transform their operations for the better. Its high speed and extreme traffic handling capacity, together with ultra-low response times, highest reliability and support for massive machine type communication (IoT), will allow rail networks to improve safety, optimize costs and make their services more attractive to passengers in many ways. Such capabilities will make the telecommunication network the cornerstone of railways’ ambitions for further digitization.
With the Future Railway Mobile Communications System due to replace GSM-R and other legacy systems, rail operators can begin to plan early how they will prepare and migrate their networks to take advantage of 5G – the leading mobile technology that will serve the world far into the future.
Executive Summary: The Future of Railway Communications Will Be Built on 5G
The future of rail transport critically depends on taking advantage of advanced communications systems to increase safety, cut operating costs and improve the experience for rail passengers towards a digital railway.
While 4G introduced some functionality for mission-critical communications, 5G is set to go much further in meeting the demands of the Communications Service Provider (CSP) market, as well as, from day one, fully supporting the mission-critical needs of industries and enterprises, including rail operators. As well as providing efficient broadband capabilities, 5G networks will offer measures to build ultra-high reliability networks with ultra-low latency. It will also serve the need of massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) for sensors and predictive maintenance that train operators will increasingly need in the future to improve and optimize their services. With huge performance improvements over previous generations of mobile technology, 5G delivers high speeds of up to 10 Gbps and very low latency, the time for the network to respond to requests from the mobile device. Furthermore, 5G also achieves such performance at much lower cost than other technologies.
