Frequentis completed the installation of the Unified Railway Communication and Application (URCA) system on Finnish railway network, which is considered “the first bearer independent communication solution for railway communication in Europe.”
The URCS fulfils Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency’s need for a cost saving transitional solution to the future GSM-R replacement.
“We selected the application solution from Frequentis to support us in this transitional replacement of GSM-R and allow communications to continue independently of the radio network technology. This enables us toward our goal for cost savings and efficiency,” Markku Voutilainen, Senior Inspector at Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency said.
Following the completion of the contract signed in 2016, now Finnish railway users are able to smoothly migrate from GSM-R to the TETRA network Vivre, the Finnish Public Safety digital TETRA radio network, and public mobile networks for all railway-specific communication functionalities, allowing greater flexibility to follow the future evolution of such networks, as well as ensuring less dependency on one specific communication standard.
The end-to-end solution is based on the Frequentis fixed terminal rail communication system FTS 3020 and provides an entirely new set of options beyond GSM-R.
The contract also included voice recording and a special smartphone application, called RAPLI, which also allows the usage of the rail specific functions on the public mobile networks. Train radio has to be TETRA radio based on EU derogation, but all other mobile users can choose between the TETRA or public mobile network.
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