Abstract

Currently wireless communications services for railways are typically deployed on dedicated network infrastructures based on the legacy of 2G GSM-R technology. However, GSM-R is becoming quickly obsolete and network equipment manufacturers have committed to maintain such systems only until 2030. For these reasons, railways infrastructure managers are becoming increasingly concerned about GSM-R end-of-life and numerous international working groups are studying how to migrate existing railway services from GSM-R to a more modern, non-exclusive wireless communication technology. This paper presents early results of a study investigating techno-economic aspects of such a migration to next generation communication systems. Different future implementation scenarios of both Network as an Asset (NaaA) and Network as a Service (NaaS) paradigms are considered. The results are validated with stakeholders from the telecommunication and railway communities."br" The study is performed by the MISTRAL project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme under the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking Open Call “Technical specifications for a new Adaptable Communication system for all Railways”.