Tele2 and the Russian Railway agreed about development of mobile services for passengers

In June, 2017 Tele2, the alternative mobile operator, and JSC Russian Railways (JSC "Russian Railways") signed the agreement on cooperation in the field of development of communication services within the business forum "Strategic Partnership of 1520". A main objective of the agreement − providing a continuous covering of Tele2 network along the railroads.

The agreement on cooperation was signed the development director and project implementations of LTE-450 Tele2 by Dmitry Kurilov and the CIO of JSC "Russian Railways" Evgeny Charkin. The document provides development of Tele2 network along railway infrastructure, providing to passengers the high-speed mobile Internet and other services. The parties also agreed about operation of the equipment for rendering services of mobile broadband access in trains of the Russian Railway.

The agreement opens new opportunities for cooperation before Tele2 and the Russian Railway. Before the company successfully tested technology of remote control rolling stocks and a station radio communication based on LTE-450 network which Tele2 started under the Skylink brand.

Within this pilot project of Tele2 and the Russian Railway completed testing of Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) technology in switchyard Luga of Oktyabrskaya Railway. The base station working at frequency of 450 MHz is capable to cover the territory with a radius up to 30 km. It provides not only good penetration of a signal, but also cost optimization: at a wide scope the technology does not require installation of a large number of base stations, as in other ranges.

Thanks to the solution MEC the driver-operator has an opportunity to use video in real time in a management system for the locomotive. The technology allows to transfer the image from the cameras located on the locomotive, directly in dispatching office of JSC "Russian Railways", passing reference network of the operator. It reduces transmission time of information between the locomotive and the server installed at the station twice and at the same time saves quality of video.

Specialists of Tele2 and the Russian Railway also checked a possibility of the organization of individual and group voice and video calls, using specialized terminals of connection with function of PTT (Push To Talk) and PTV (Push To Video). They are intended for instant information transfer and the solution of operational tasks by workers of the railroad. During testing the quality of a voice, the text messages, images and video transferred between terminals remained steadily high.