News
Italy to Boost WiFi on HS Trains and Roll Out Service to Regional Trains
(19 Nov 2021, BWCS Staff)Italian State Railways has announced ambitious plans to improve and later expand WiFi services on board trains. Speaking on Thursday, Luigi Ferraris, the Managing Director of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, highlighted plans for 2022, which include the enhancement of WiFi connectivity on high-speed trains to enable passengers to work whilst travelling.
At the same time, Snr Ferraris underlined how keen his company is to expand the current WiFi services to also cover regional trains. In total, FS Italiane will launch a fleet of 238 new trains on regional services – over the coming decade. At the same time his company will extend a fibre-optic network along the routes as part of a ten-year upgrade plan.
Since 2019 Trenitalia’s high-speed Frecciarossa 1000 fleet has been offering WiFi on-board via the Icomera’s X-Series platform which offers LTE-Advanced connectivity. Icomera’s future-proof solution has been deployed in conjunction with Trenitalia’s custom-designed cellular antenna arrays for high-speed trains. Frecciarossa fleets can thus take advantage of mobile communication improvements such as LTE-Advanced Pro and 5G solutions, as they are rolled out.
The work to retrofit the Frecciarossa 1000 fleet has been overseen, under Trenitalia’s control, by Icomera’s new Italian office. Speaking at the time of the service launch, Marco Caposciutti, Technical Director of Trenitalia’s Rolling Stock Division, commented “Trenitalia has invested many development efforts to implement this advanced passenger Internet service on its existing high-speed fleets during planned maintenance stops, without impacting on the whole fleets’ availability. The design collaboration with Icomera, HRI and the other technological partners involved in the project, has achieved one of the highest levels of global system efficiency, also guaranteeing very high performance for future developments.”
The new scheme, Snr Ferraris said, will be presented in its entirety next February. According to reports in the local press, FS Italiane is looking at the various new and most recent track to train connectivity solutions. The company has recently been working with Hitachi to trial a blend of 5G and satellite communication solutions in a bid to cut kit costs along the track and improve maintenance interventions.
Ferraris admitted that WiFi on the company’s high-speed line, is “not yet up to scratch”, despite recent improvements. He promised that this would be one of the first objectives tackled by next year’s plan. However, he admitted that the expansion of on-board WiFi services to regional trains would be a much longer project and would certainly involve rolling out fibre-optic connectivity to cover virtually the entire Italian rail network.
Track-side connectivity and on-board WiFi provision were the main subjects of BWCS’s recent Traincomms Conference in London on the 16th and 17th of November
Please see www.Traincomms.com where you can also sign up for our Free WiFi on Trains News Service.
Or, to discuss speaking and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Ross.Parsons@BWCS.com
The 2021 conference (www.Traincomms.com) was sponsored by Icomera, Nomad Digital, RADWIN, BAI Communications, Westermo and GlobalReach Technology.
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