ESA project for broadband on trains becomes commercial service (Forwarded)

ESA News
http://www.esa.int

20 May 2008

ESA project for broadband on trains becomes commercial service

True broadband access for Thalys high-speed train passengers travelling
between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne is now available,
representing a great technological achievement -- establishing a continuous,
two-way link between a train travelling at 300 km/h and a satellite at an
altitude of 36 000 km. This is a commercial application of work begun by
ESA's Broadband to Trains initiative.

'Thalysnet' is the commercial name of this application, officially launched
on 14 May. It was developed by a consortium lead by Nokia Siemens Networks,
which combines satellite communications with conventional wireless data
technologies to provide a continuous Internet connection on board trains
travelling across national borders at 300 km/h. One of the companies in the
consortium is the UK-based 21Net, which carried out a pilot project in 2005
under the European Space Agency's Broadband to Trains initiative.

21Net worked with leading railway operators such as RENFE (Spain) and SNCF
(France), along with Thalys, to develop a solution combining bi-directional
satellite communications with terrestrial wireless technologies. Its
Broadband to Trains system is a robust and technically mature system that
complies with railway standards. Tests were conducted by Thalys, which
provided an experimental Internet service on trains between Paris, Brussels
and Amsterdam. These tests proved the system designed by 21Net was workable,
and passengers showed considerable interest in the service.

The 21Net system architecture is based on two-way Ku-band satellite system
to provide connectivity between the Internet backbone and a master server on
the train. A hub station provides the connection from the Internet backbone
(and from the network operations centre) via the satellite directly to a
low-profile tracking antenna on the train.

Terrestrial wireless access between the train and available networks is also
provided when the satellite connection may be obstructed, such as when
travelling through tunnels.

21Net has mastered the use of a unique mobile satellite modem to share the
satellite bandwidth across all the trains in the fleet, allocating bandwidth
on demand according to the usage level on the train. With the 21Net system,
satellite bandwidth scales linearly with Internet use.

The use of two-way Ku-band satellite transmission enables 21Net to deliver
high bandwidth (2 Mbit/s by 512 kbit/s) connectivity to the train, which can
be shared by multiple, simultaneous users.

Currently six trains in the Thalys fleet are equipped with Thalysnet. The
complete fleet, 26 trains in total, will be equipped by October 2008.

[NOTE: Images and weblinks supporting this release are available at
http://www.esa.int/esaTE/SEM1A01YUFF_index_1.html ]