PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe taps Ericsson for testing 5G based railway comms

On a test track connected to one of Europe’s largest railways, Ericsson and partners will test Future Railway Mobile Communications System (FRMCS) for the Polish national railway company PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. The project will run for two years. A letter of intent for the trial was signed by Ericsson, PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A and partners at the InnoTrans 2024 railway trade fair in Berlin.

Transporting hundreds of thousands of passengers and tons of freight every day using rail lines that crisscross countries and continents requires a system that cannot be allowed to fail. This is the reason for replacing the old communications system with 5G technology. This new standard – Future Railway Mobile Communications System (FRMCS) – is expected to be fully developed in 2027, with the first commercial implementations starting in 2028. It allows real-time data exchange between trains, crucial for safe and efficient railway operations. It is designed with robustness, reliability and far greater data transfer speed and capacity than legacy GSM-R.

The letter of intent for the trial was signed by Ericsson and PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A extending the letter of intent that was that was signed in September 2023 between Ericsson, NetWorks, the Polish Railway Institute and Alstom.

Piotr Kubicki, Member of the Management Board and Director for Digital Transformation at PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A., says: “FRMCS is becoming the engine behind the digitalization of the entire rail component in Europe. The Future Railway Mobile Communication System and its research at the training ground begin a new standard of communication.”

Ericsson will deliver Ericsson will deliver innovative Mission-Critical Network solutions aimed at demonstrating the benefits of 5G for railway operations in general and particularly to prepare the technological migration of railways in Poland.

These solutions include the Ericsson Radio System for the dedicated FRMCS band n101 (1900MHz) together with an Enclosure and Power solution, as well as the Local Packet Gateway for integration with Orange Poland’s and T-Mobile Poland’s 5G standalone network.

Ericsson will also provide local expert guidance based at R&D centers in Łódź and Kraków. These teams will be responsible for the architecture, configuration and optimization of the delivered solutions.

The Ericsson solutions will be installed at the Railway Institute’s facilities in Żmigród, near Wrocław in western Poland. Preparations begin in 2024 and the trial is expected to run until the second half of 2027.

Martin Mellor, Head of Ericsson Poland, says: “We are delighted to sign this letter of intent with PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. FRMCS can facilitate significant benefits for rail travel – from helping to deliver 5G connectivity to enabling video analytics, safety features and automation. The learnings taken from this trial will not only benefit the strategic migration of Poland’s railways away from GSM-R, it will also contribute to the standardization of FRMCS in the near future.”