Nortel Buzzboard

You might not think that Nortel is in the business of making high-speed rail safer, but that’s what Nortel announced yesterday in one of several customer win announcements released.

If you live in the U.S. or Canada, you’re probably not that familiar with GSM-R technology. As its name indicates, GSM-R is built on the GSM wireless standard popular around the world. But while GSM is a legacy wireless standard soon to be replaced with newer 3G and 4G technologies, GSM-R is a relatively new standard specifically targeted to railway networks (more detail here).

The GSM-R standard is a digital replacement for today’s hodge-podge of mostly incompatible analogue railway radio networks. It requires fewer base stations (lower CapEx), supports voice and data, enables communications as higher speeds (up to 500km/h), and supports features such as emergency broadcast, auto train control, and passenger comm services. Together, this results in a train that can safely go faster, with a less costly and more robust communications network.

Yesterday Nortel announced GSM-R contracts for two new railway lines in Algeria. It turns out that Nortel is the number one GSM-R provider globally, supporting 60% of the more than 115,000 km of tracks worldwide using GSM-R.

In a separate release Tuesday, Nortel announced that Bahamas Telecommunications Company, the primary telecom operator in the Bahamas, was using Nortel to upgrade their wireless network from TDMA to GSM, and would also use Nortel EDGE technology for increased mobile data download speeds.

Not to be outdone, Bermuda Telephone Company is using Nortel carrier VoIP technology to provide new fixed mobile convergence capabilities to their customers. For example, subscribers will have the ability to have calls rerouted from their wireless service to their voicemail or home phone.

All of this begs the question, is there anywhere left in the world where you should expect not to have connectivity?