BOMBAY, India – Indian Railways will use wireless railway communications technology to help improve the safety and efficiency on one of the most important and busiest rail arteries in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, officials announced.
The Nortel GSM-R network will provide highly sophisticated wireless communications along the 751-km, 90-station line connecting the major Uttar Pradesh industrial and business centers of Ghaziabad and Mugalsarai, according to Nortel. The wireless system will be used to connect train conductors, on-board crew, train dispatchers, station personnel and other operations groups, such as those responsible for attaching and separating rail cars at station yards.
This Uttar Pradesh signaling and communications contract is the largest of its type awarded by Indian Railways to date as part of the modernization of its national railway infrastructure. The contract was secured by a regional consortium consisting of Ansaldo Signal, its Asia Pacific subsidiary Union Switch & Signal, MR Trading and Leighton Asia (Southern) Limited. Nortel was selected by Leighton to provide the GSM-R network.
This is Nortel’s second such contract in India. Nortel was previously chosen as sole provider of a GSM-R solution to Eastern Railway of West Bengal.
“This is a significant win for Nortel and demonstrates our continued commitment to India,” said Malur Narayan, vice president, Carrier Networks, India, Nortel. "As India’s fourth largest state, Uttar Pradesh is home to 16.4 percent of our 1.03 billion people, and the Ghaziabad-Mugalsarai rail link plays a vital role in the state’s social and economic prosperity and wellbeing.
Nortel is a world leader in GSM-R technology and has been selected to deploy GSM-R networks in three continents and ten countries.
In Asia, Nortel GSM-R customers include Eastern Railway in India and China’s Ministry of Railways, with GSM-R switching centers along passenger lines spanning 20 of China’s 31 provinces. Nortel was also chosen for national deployments by the three largest railway operations in Europe – RFF in France, Network Rail in Great Britain and Deutsche Bahn in Germany. Recently, the Nortel solution was also selected for the initial phase of Africa’s first GSM-R project by Algerian Railways operator SNTF.
Nortel has been a pioneer in the GSM-R standards process since 1992, and works with Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC) and the Europe Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) on standards improvements. Nortel supplied equipment for the initial Mobile Radio for Railways Networks in Europe (MORANE) trial and was a major contributor to the European Integrated Railway Radio Enhanced Network (EIRENE) GSM-R standard.
– PRNewswire-FirstCall
