27 December, 2004: Siemens Communications Group has received orders from China and India to build mobile networks for railroad communication, hence achieving a breakthrough for the GSM Railway (GSM-R) communication platform on the Asian market. A framework agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways envisages long-term strategic cooperation. The first project entails equipping the 470km high-speed line from Jinan to Qingdao, south of Beijing. In India, the first project will involve Siemens equipping around 700km of rail track for the Indian Railways subsidiary North Frontier Railways in the northeastern states of West Bengal, Bihar and Assam with GSM-R.

Indian Railways alone, as one of the world's largest railway companies, operates a rail network with around 63,000km of track and 14,000 trains that transport over a million tons of freight and more than 14mn passengers daily. Over the next few years, Indian Railways wants to equip its main routes in India with GSM-R, in order to improve security and reliability. The order value for this first project totals about €4.5mn.

Siemens will also supply Indian Railways with its solution railway@vantage, which covers specific applications for train traffic such as Location Dependent Addressing (LDA) and Functional Addressing. The engine driver will thus, for example, be able to reach the control center at the nearest station automatically at the press of a button on his GSM-R mobile phone, without having to dial the center separately.

Chinese Railways operates a rail network covering 73,000km of track on which it transports over 5.5mn tons of freight and more than 2.7mn passengers daily. The agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways also includes setting up a GSM-R test center in Beijing for research and development, interoperability tests and standardisation issues.

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