Siemens Wins Asian GSM-R Contracts

Siemens has received orders from China and India to build mobile networks for railroad communication, hence achieving a breakthrough for the GSM Railway (GSM-R) communication platform on the Asian market. A framework agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways envisages long-term strategic cooperation. The first project entails equipping the 470 kilometer high-speed line from Jinan to Qingdao, south of Beijing . In India, the first project will involve Siemens equipping around 700 kilometers of rail track for the Indian Railways subsidiary North Frontier Railways in the northeastern states of West Bengal , Bihar and Assam with GSM-R.

"The orders from China and India marks the breakthrough for our GSM-R business on the Asian market", explained Christoph Caselitz, President of Mobile Networks at Siemens Communications. "The introduction of GSM-R technology is just getting off the ground in Asia and still offers enormous potential for growth if you consider the spread of the GSM standard and the significance of rail traffic in this region."

Indian Railways alone, as one of the world's largest railway companies, operates a rail network with around 63,000 kilometers of track and 14,000 trains that transport over a million tons of freight and more than 14 million passengers daily. Over the next few years, Indian Railways wants to equip its main routes in India with GSM-R, in order to improve security and reliability. The order value for this first project totals about 4.5 million euros.

For the new projects in India and China , Siemens will install the entire infrastructure for the GSM-R network and supply all the components needed for operation. These range from switching centers, base stations, and service and administration platforms, to elements for data transmission from the base station to the controller, and the mobile handsets for the engine driver.

Siemens will also supply Indian Railways with its solution railway@vantage, which covers specific applications for train traffic such as Location Dependent Addressing (LDA) and Functional Addressing. The engine driver will thus, for example, be able to reach the control center at the nearest station automatically at the press of a button on his GSM-R mobile phone, without having to dial the center separately.

Chinese Railways operates a rail network covering 73,000 kilometers of track on which it transports over 5.5 million tons of freight and more than 2.7 million passengers daily. The agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways also includes setting up a GSM-R test center in Beijing for research and development, interoperability tests and standardization issues."

Posted to the site on 20th December 2004