SWR Launches Superfast Broadband on Some Trains…

One of the UK's busiest train companies South Western Railway (SWR) has finally gone live with Rail-5G connectivity along a 70km stretch of line between the London suburb of Earlsfield and Basingstoke. The new system, developed by First Group subsidiary Evo-Rail, can, according to SWR, offer connections at "up to 20 times faster than the current available average."

The full programme for this year’s Traincomms Conference is available here: https://www.traincomms.com/#content2b

The operator reports that its passengers on the Earlsfield to Basingstoke line can now stream content, make video calls and download large files whilst on-board, with previous bandwidth restrictions having largely been removed.

Despite the new service going live this week, FirstGroup has previously declared that it no longer plans to extend the roll out of the Evo-Rail system any further. In fact, FirstGroup said last year that while it remained committed to installing, commissioning, and maintaining Evo-Rail's current projects, including the SWR deployment, it would not be actively developing new Rail 5G projects.

However, in spite of this, SWR argues that the Rail 5G system it is now using provides more reliable connectivity over mast-based connections than can be found on the vast majority of services across Europe and the United Kingdom.

David Statham, FirstGroup’s Rail Commercial Director, commented, “The Rail-5G solution we have installed on SWR can dramatically improve connectivity on passenger trains and the technology allows passengers to have constant, uninterrupted and consistent internet at 20 times the average speed of today’s mobile connection.”

He went on, “We are very excited to have completed the installation of the project with SWR and Network Rail and we are sure that customers travelling on this stretch of the network will notice a real difference.”

The technology was rolled out following a successful large-scale pilot on SWR’s Island Line on the Isle of Wight.

Trackside communications systems and LEO satellite-delivered broadband as ways of supplying better on-train WiFi will both feature heavily at this year’s Traincomms Conference in London (www.Traincomms.com ).

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The full programme for this year’s Traincomms Conference is available here: https://www.traincomms.com/#content2b