Delivering connectivity to the railway industry can be difficult. Over the last two years, LEO solutions have provided a much-needed link between the railways and the rest of the world. To help us explore this phenomenon, we spoke with Torsten John, who is the SVP of Sales, EMEA at Icomera and a top performer in the European railway industry, on Episode 29 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast. Read on to find out more about connecting the railways. 

The LEO market has arguably had the most direct impact on the railway connectivity market in the last 24 months. Why do you think that is? 

Digitalisation in the railways is a very slow process. They’ve always been behind the aviation and the automotive industries in how they adapt to technological shifts. That includes connectivity, Wi-Fi and passenger services, but getting the passenger connected on trains has been an ever-growing demand for travelers, particularly here in Europe, North America and also in vast parts of Asia. However, that area is unfortunately mostly dominated by the quality of the Wi-Fi. Yes, there is a lot of technology in the equation, but it’s still vastly dominated by geography, which impacts Wi-Fi. 

When trains travel in densely populated countries with good infrastructure, such as in the Netherlands, they have much better connectivity by nature than trains traveling in the Midwest or parts of Spain. There are areas where you don’t see 4G or even 3G, so there’s nothing the train operators can do to get a better service for their clients. For these clients, LEO solutions (with the exception of train stations with metal roofs and tunnels or areas with very high buildings such as Manhattan) remove the equation of geography. 

It almost feels like LEO is at the very beginning of what they’re doing. Starlink is a leader in that space, and what Starlink is doing with their current and the next generation, is use the cellular data spectrum such as the 700 megahertz the lower 5G bands, and channel it from space onto Earth. That means that you can connect from your iPhone or Android phone directly to a star. That technology has so much potential to revolutionize cellular networks, which is a dramatic technological shift, not just for connectivity on railways, but in many other areas too. 

Especially in the LEO market, where technology is moving at such a rapid rate, is there risk associated with relying more exclusively on satellite technology?

No connected railway or passenger infrastructure provider – or even freight infrastructure provider – should solely rely on LEO. The Starlink network is by far the most advanced compared to the other four solutions that are currently available, but the problem with Starlink is that their antennas are proprietary. If you put a Starlink solution on your train, you cannot connect to any other system, and if you put another system on the train, you cannot connect to the Starlink network. That creates extensive build and documentation costs around your starting solution. 

So, using only LEO is certainly not the right way to go. You still need to combine it with cellular networks. We’ve seen in our deployments and analyzers that cellular and Starlink augment each other perfectly along the railway. In areas where you have weak cellular coverage, you normally have good LEO coverage and vice versa, making them complementary technologies for the railway. 

To learn more about railway connectivity, tune into Episode 29 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast here. 

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