Nokia Siemens Networks enhances railway communication for the Hefei-Nanjing Line with GSM-R system

The Hefei-Nanjing passenger-dedicated line, is an important part of China’s newly built high-speed passenger service network, and will be China’s first modern passenger-service line for commercial use.

The 166 kilometer-long Hefei-Nanjing Line, connecting the capitals of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces in the Yangtze River Delta, is an integral part of the “Four Longitudinal and Four Horizontal” Passenger Service Network. The line, to be put into operation in early 2008, will become China’s first newly built passenger-dedicated line for commercial use at speeds of 200 km/h. With cutting-edge technologies, strong network implementing capability and rich network operation and maintenance experience, Nokia Siemens Networks stood out among the competition and won the contract, integrating both GSM-R and the world’s leading tunnel technology.

“We are honored to provide GSM-R system for China’s first railway passenger-dedicated line at 200km/h. It marks another milestone of Nokia Siemens Networks in GSM-R following our contract in this April for the Wuhan-Guangzhou Line—the longest high-speed railway in the world. China’s railway construction is experiencing an unprecedented leap forward, and Nokia Siemens Networks will provide the most advanced technology, the most reliable products and the best services as we have done in the past. We hope to make Hefei-Nanjing Line a model of GSM-R communication system for passenger-dedicated railway lines in China”, said Mr. Zhang Zhiqiang, head of the Greater China Region of Nokia Siemens Networks.

Nokia Siemens Networks is one of the inventors of GSM-R technology, with Siemens researching and creating the GSM-R standard starting in the early 1990s.The world’s first three GSM-R trial networks and the first commercial network were all supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks.

In China, Nokia Siemens Networks is the leader of GSM-R communication system. So far, Nokia Siemens Networks has undertaken four of the total six GSM-R passenger-dedicated line projects in China that are under construction or have been put into operation. Notably, the Beijing-Tianjin Railway, supporting Beijing’s big sports games in 2008, is the first high-speed railway with the maximum speed of 350 km/h. In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks is the exclusive provider of Chinese GSM-R intelligent network and HLRi system. The GSM-R core network provided by Nokia Siemens Networks will serve the main railway lines and bear over 50% of the wireless communication traffic on Chinese railways.

To date, Nokia Siemens Networks has deployed GSM-R networks in 17 countries serving 50,000 km of railways, making it the world’s Number One GSM-R vendor in both number of commercial networks and length of operational GSM-R lines.