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Telecommunication equipment manufacturer Nortel said it has been selected by ADIF, Spain’s national railway infrastructure company, to implement, operate and maintain a complete Global System for Mobile Communications – Railway radio communication solution on the new Barcelona-Figueres high-speed line.

 

GSM-R is the new wireless communication standard for railway networks, developed under European Union sponsorship. GSM-R is part of the European Rail Traffic Management System standard that combines GSM-R for voice communication and European Train Control System for signaling systems.

 

The standard is intended for helping the railways to achieve their goals of network interoperability, reduced operational costs, improved safety at higher speeds, and delivery of new services for the benefit of passengers and employees, Nortel (News - Alert) said.

 

The contract is worth more than $27 million. Under this contract, Nortel will supply a complete GSM-R radio solution with network management, as well as services including network implementation and network design. The contract also includes a three-year network operation and maintenance contract, the company said.

 

Nortel’s GSM-R technology supports reliable and secure communications among railway operational staff including drivers, dispatchers, train engineers and station controllers. With the help of ERTMS, the signaling information is carried directly to the train driver, enabling faster train speeds and increased traffic density while maintaining a high level of safety.

 

The news comes as Toronto-based Nortel sketches a vision of Internet Telephony (News - Alert) as a technology that will include voice and multimedia features.

 

As TMCnet reported, in video, podcast and print presentations put out today, Nortel, the largest telephone equipment maker in North America, announced that it sees VoIP as a building block for next-generation communications that could include applications that integrate video conference and instant messaging with digital TV.

 

The current project by ADIF links the Spanish Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line with Figueres-Perpignan that crosses the Spanish and French border. Nortel’s GSM-R network is already running on the international Figueres-Perpignan high-speed line.

 

The new high-speed line will accommodate trains running at speeds of up to 350 km per hour, Nortel said. They include passenger traffic as well as freight traffic originating or terminating at Port of Barcelona, the top Spanish port for international traffic and one of the major ports in the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. Nortel plans the commercial launch of the service in 2012.

 

“This contract is the first with ADIF for a high-speed line, extending our global market leadership in GSM-R,” said Fernando Valdivielso, vice president, Nortel Iberia. “Our experience deploying GSM-R networks worldwide was a key factor for ADIF’s decision to award this contract to Nortel.”