Nortel Wins Czech GSM-R Expansion Contract

Czech Railways has selected Nortel GSM-R technology to provide wireless communications to the 207 km Czech section of the International Railway Corridor IV between Austria and Poland. Nortel partner Kapsch CarrierCom will supply and deploy the network. The project began in June 2009 and is scheduled for completion by end of 2009.

The new GSM-R network extension will be installed on the corridor line connecting Austria to Poland from Breclav to Prerov in the Czech Republic to Petrovice u Karviné on the Polish border.

This latest GSM-R contract follows announcements from 2007 awarding Kapsch CarrierCom and Nortel the Czech Railways GSM-R technology contracts for railway lines from the Czech Republic through Slovakia and Hungary to destinations in Greece, Turkey and Romania.

"Kapsch was traditionally an expert in the analog sector and today, thanks to the quality of our work and our ongoing relationship with Nortel, we have a leading position in GSM-R, the next generation digital wireless train communication system," explains Thomas Schoepf, Kapsch CarrierCom Board of Directors. "We are pleased with the success of our joint GSM-R projects in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria and we also believe that we have good opportunities to secure upcoming projects in other South-Eastern European countries."

The new contract includes an extension to the Czech Railway's switching subsystem and an upgrade to Nortel's intelligent network and GPRS packet core solution. Three additional repeater stations will be created to ensure network coverage in locations that would otherwise be difficult to reach.

Posted to the site on 13th July 2009