ERLANGEN, Germany—The Siemens Mobility Division has been awarded a contract by the British railway company Network Rail to supply 6,100 GSM-R radio devices worth 26.5 million euros. The devices are intended to cover the needs of a large part of the British train fleet. The Mobility Division has also won another GSM-R contract as a member of a consortium with Nokia Siemens Networks in Australia. There, a communication system for a 380 km line in the State of Victoria is to be installed by Siemens on behalf of the Department of Transport. This order has a value of is 75.6 million euros. Siemens is supplying, among other items, 640 radio units as well as the associated communications equipment.

At the moment, GSM-R is the most modern digital communications standard for rail traffic. It is used not only for voice communication but also primarily for train protection and control. In contrast to public mobile radio, GSM-R has added-value performance features such as a functional call-number structure with leading digits, followed by the train number and a function code. GSM-R also supports group calls, prioritization and the displacement of lower-priority calls by calls with a higher urgency level. With GSM-R, emergency calls have the highest urgency level, followed by data for automatic train protection and voice communication relating to railway operations.