Finnish railways moves from GSM-R to VIRVE TETRA service
The Finnish Government last week decided that Finnish Railways will move from GSM-R to TETRA for Train Communications.
According to the website of the Finnish Government the current GSM-R communications system for the Finnish Railways will be replaced with TETRA, using the VIRVE* service.
Finnish Rail is now using a GSM-R train radio communications system named; the RAILI network. This network has to be replaced because of age and interference with commercial networks. One of the technical problems is that, in some occasions, GSM-R is interfering with 3G and the other way around. Additionally the GSM-R network equipment is aging.
The Finnish Government has calculated that moving from GSM-R to the VIRVE TETRA service, will provide significant savings. The additional initial investment in TETRA network as well as the OPEX costs for answering the railway needs would be significantly lower compared to having both VIRVE TETRA service for public safety and other authorities and a dedicated GSM-R network for railways.
Therefore the board of directors believes that it would be most appropriate and advantageous to switch to the VIRVE TETRA network as soon as possible. In order to accomplish this, Finland will ask for an exemption to the EU, as currently the use of GSM-R for train communications is an EU directive and therefore obligated.
Finland may begin to move to TETRA, as soon as the exception request to the commission has been made. The Finnish Transport Agency will take the VIRVE TETRA service into use as soon as possible, according to the government decision.
Next week meetings are already scheduled in order to start the process of transformation. At the end of 2018, the full transformation should be completed.
At the end of the transformation the Finnish Government will save about €100.000.000 over the coming 10 years, with the result for the Finnish Rail to be able to communicate through a reliable, secure and proven shared VIRVE TETRA network for critical communication users in Finland.
*VIRVE is the fully Government owned Nationwide shared authority TETRA network in Finland comprising of approx. 1350 base stations.
