DAMM's TETRAFlex system deployed in Almaty Metro in Kazakhstan

On the 1st of December the historically grand opening of Almaty Metro was taking place, with the officially inauguration made by Nursulatan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan.

The construction began in 1988. The project was delayed for many years, because of the collapse of Soviet Union, which Kazakhstan was part of. The construction cost is estimated at 101 billion tenge ($1 billion).

Almaty is the largest city of Kazakhstan, with a population of about 1,5 million people. Almaty is regarded as the commercial capital of Kazakhstan.

The first line opened will run between 7 stations and has an overall length of 8,5 km. When the second phase of the underground system is completed, the new lines will be 17.5 kilometers and it will include 11 stations.
It was decided to equip Almaty Metro with the most up to date technology available. This included the choice of DAMM's TetraFlex for the radio communication infrastructure as a natural choice.

The deployed TetraFlex solution consists of 9 dual carrier outdoor base-stations, which gives radio coverage to underground tubes and train stations. The number of sub-scribers in this first phase, are about 150 (both mobile and portable radios). The TetraFlex outdoor base stations gives the advantage of low installation costs, because they can be mounted directly in the very harsh, dusty and humid environments of underground tunnels.??The integration of the DAMM's TetraFlex solution into the Metro IT infrastructure was done by the company LightOn, which was the official contractor.



Mr. Oleg Zimenkov, President of Light-On states that, the main reason for choosing Damm TetraFlex was to ensure a reliable and secure communication system. With DAMM's TetraFlex solution being a truly de-centralized solution, it leaves no single point of failure. Also the cost savings in installing an outdoor base station solution with extremely low power consumption played an important role. This combined with the flexibility/scalability due to the IP based connectivity, and the feature rich applications optimized for Russian speaking users (Dispatcher, Log-Server and Network management), provided a future proof solution, with the highest possible reliability.??

Per Skovsund, Director of System Business at DAMM comments: "We are happy adding Almaty Metro to another major city Metro operation. Rail and Metro is a very important market for us.  Through many years of experience from this sector we fully understand the critical importance of providing crucial communications integration between operations, staff, passengers and emergency units, enhancing efficiency and safety as well as the satisfaction of personnel and passengers."

Source: DAMM