Chairman :

• François Davenne, Director General, UIC

Speaker :

•  
•  
• Josef Doppelbauer, Executive Director, ERA
• Giorgio Travaini, Executive Director a.i., Europe’s Rail JU

Several major representatives from the Transport, Rail and Telecommunication sectors will provide their vision and their perspectives regarding the railway telecom evolution.

Chairman:

Speakers:

Since the late 90’s where GSM-R started being implemented in parallel of ERTMS, its development has been impressive in Europe as well as all over the world. This standard developed by the railways through UIC has become the worldwide reference of railway mobile telecommunications. Essential element to support railway applications such as voice operational communications (REC, LDA, Functional Addressing, …) and signalling (ETCS), GSM-R has started to evolve from circuit-switch (TDM) to packet-switch (IP) with the recent introduction of GPRS, and will be maintained by UIC together with the railway community and the railway telecom industry for the next decade at least, in order to preserve the investment and to have sufficient time for the introduction of the next railway mobile standard.

Chairman:

Speakers:

If FRMCS was initially only considered as the necessary successor of GSM-R, it evolved as the enabler for the increasing various topics driving railway towards digitalization, such as the game changers envisaged by European Transport Authorities (ETCS Level 3 and ATO, for instance), and also other key elements of the railway domain (virtual coupling, smart maintenance, monitoring of trackside components, TCMS, or new applications that are in various development stages today). The scope of FRMCS has then to encompass much more than the pure replacement of the current GSM-R system.

Chairman:

• Achim Vrielink, Head of Telecom Platform Development, DB Netz AG

Speakers:

• Dan Mandoc, Head of FRMCS, UIC
•  
• Thomas Châtelet, ERTMS Officer, ERA
•  

FRMCS is now a strategic program led by UIC on behalf of Infrastructure Managers and Railway Undertakings. The purpose of the program comprises diverse but focused activities which are developed in partnership with the key players of the railway eco-system, namely the Telecom Industry, the European Authorities and Stakeholders, the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking and many others. Synergy, alignment of timing and convergence to common objectives are an absolute prerequisite for the success of FRMCS definition, standardization, delivery and migration from GSM-R.

Chairman:

Speakers:

•  
•  
• Guillaume Gach, FRMCS Design Authority, UIC
•  
•  

FRMCS is well advanced on its specification roadmap, with the publication of UIC User Requirements Specification and UIC Use Cases Catalogue. These requirements and use cases are feeding a specific telecom standardization stream in 3GPP, through the essential work of ETSI, so that the next railway radio standard will be genuinely embedded in the future worldwide radio standards such as 5G. Another essential element is the allocation of frequencies to FRMCS, worked out in various telecom-oriented organizations such as CEPT and ECC dedicated groups. This is the opportunity to have a deep dive in this significant work and achievements, together with the architects of this complex process, and also to understand more precisely the global plan that will permit to deliver the FRMCS standard to the entire railway community.

Chairman:

• Eric Giraud-Desjuzeur, FRMCS Program Director, SNCF Réseau

Speakers:

•  
•  
• Michael Kloecker, Head of Railway Solution Management, Nokia

The adhesion of railway telecom industry to the FRMCS project is an absolute need, not only because there will be a need for adequate and standardized products to be ready for the time of early deployments, but also because the continuous contribution of industrial leaders is required during all the phases of definition, specification and standardization of FRMCS. Some of the recognized leaders of railway telecom industry will provide therefore their vision and their plans for FRMCS development, deployment and future usage.

Chairman:

Speakers:

• Dan Mandoc, Head of FRMCS, UIC
•  
•  
•  
•  

Defining, specifying and standardizing FRMCS is a must, but it is not sufficient. The migration from GSM-R will be quite complex, for at least two reasons: first, this will take time at each country level and consequently railways will live for a certain number of years with hybrid networks, and second, the expectation will be to reach with FRMCS the same impressive quality level obtained with GSM-R. The migration of railway fleets is also a technical and economical major concern for all Railway Undertakings. The specific UIC program for FRMCS migration will be consequently detailed, including the conception of a new telecom on-board architecture, and some preliminary orientations regarding FRMCS operational migrations will be presented.

Keynote:
Keir Fitch, Head of Unit ’Rail Safety and Interoperability’ DG MOVE, European Commission

Conclusions:
Jean-Michel Evanghelou, Director Telecom, Signalling and Digital Applications, UIC

Closing:

Conclusions & Next Steps

Tombola Awards