South Western Railway to install 5G WiFi between Basingstoke and Earlsfield

[BenS123]

Just spotted this - https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2022/1...to-basingstoke-and-earlsfield-passengers.html

"The impressive technology is capable of vastly improving connectivity on trains providing delivery of superfast continuous internet at 50 times the rate of current average speeds."
"A huge pilot of the scheme has been carried out on South Western Railway’s Island Line on the Isle of Wight and has been a resounding success, proving the rail-5G can consistently deliver 1GB per second on a moving train so much so that rail-5G is now being rolled out across other parts of the rail operators network"
"Early 2023 will see the project complete and launched for customers to use."


As a regular passenger on the South Western Main Line, this should really help to reduce the areas where no signal is received on the line - which unfortunately seems to be most of the line!

I hope that this technology if a success is rolled out across the rail network, as it would increase passenger comfort.

 

[[.n]]

Ironically I find its not between Basingtoke and Earlsfield/London thats the problem on SWR, but after Basingstoke. Assuming of course that Wi-Fi is even working on my train!

 

[nlogax]

Ironically I find its not between Basingtoke and Earlsfield/London thats the problem on SWR, but after Basingstoke. Assuming of course that Wi-Fi is even working on my train!

For me I find it's the Zone 2-4 part of the line that's poor for data, wifi or mobile.

 

[fandroid]

Ironically I find its not between Basingtoke and Earlsfield/London thats the problem on SWR, but after Basingstoke. Assuming of course that Wi-Fi is even working on my train!

As a Basingstoke regular I've always found that my EE signal vanishes just about as soon as the train leaves the station heading Londonwards. There was another thread recently about mobile reception and WiFi nationally that said that SWR had already dramatically improved its previously almost useless WiFi. As I was on an SWR train at the time I tried it and was pleasantly surprised that it had been upgraded already

 

[antharro]

As an SWML user from Poole/Bournemouth, I tend to find it's good until Christchurch, then nothing until New Milton, then nothing until Totton, fine through to Eastleigh (except for the tunnel at Southampton Central), then nothing until Winchester, nothing again until Basingstoke, then broadly usable through to Waterloo with the exception of a couple of specific areas. Oddly, on a down train I find the signal is fine until passing Battersea Power Station, then drops off until Clapham Junction where it picks up again. I don't notice this on an up.

(By nothing, I mean a signal that isn't reliable, cuts in and out, not good enough for web browsing or loading RTT).

So, good that SWR are investing, but can they please do the same further south as well!

 

[AM9]

As an SWML user from Poole/Bournemouth, I tend to find it's good until Christchurch, then nothing until Milton Keynes, then nothing until Totton, fine through to Eastleigh (except for the tunnel at Southampton Central), then nothing until Winchester, nothing again until Basingstoke, then broadly usable through to Waterloo with the exception of a couple of specific areas. Oddly, on a down train I find the signal is fine until passing Battersea Power Station, then drops off until Clapham Junction where it picks up again. I don't notice this on an up.

(By nothing, I mean a signal that isn't reliable, cuts in and out, not good enough for web browsing or loading RTT).

So, good that SWR are investing, but can they please do the same further south as well!

Milton Keynes?

 

[antharro]

LOL, brain had a moment there. Fixed. Admittedly no signal from Christchurch to Milton Keynes would be quite an impressive fail.

 

[Pete_uk]

To be clear, is this 5G along the route which the WiFi on the train will connect to or is it just 5G for 5G phones?

 

[Towers]

I've often said that it's only when you use (or attempt to use!) mobile internet while travelling on trains, that you realise how woefully poor the coverage is in much of the country. Often within seconds of departing a major station I find that the data drops to little or nothing, it's really quite surprising.

On SWR, I find Winchester station to be an almost total blackspot on Vodafone, despite it being in the middle of a very built up area. Winchester - Soton is largely non-existent, and then of course nowt much across the Forest which is understandable.

 

[pompeyfan]

There are various areas where mobile data and cellular service drop in and out across the network, the most surprising though was always Weybridge to Clapham, and around Winchester with the Portsmouth direct being particularly poor.

I’ve found SWRs current Wi-Fi to be okay, loading pages at remote places like Shawford and Micheldever.

To be clear, is this 5G along the route which the WiFi on the train will connect to or is it just 5G for 5G phones?

It very much sounds like the receiver on the train will receive 5G data, with any Wi-Fi device able to connect to the train, although some older tablets / mobile phones may not be able to accept the full bandwidth that 5G could offer.

 

[AM9]

There are various areas where mobile data and cellular service drop in and out across the network, the most surprising though was always Weybridge to Clapham, and around Winchester with the Portsmouth direct being particularly poor.

I’ve found SWRs current Wi-Fi to be okay, loading pages at remote places like Shawford and Micheldever.



It very much sounds like the receiver on the train will receive 5G data, with any Wi-Fi device able to connect to the train, although some older tablets / mobile phones may not be able to accept the full bandwidth that 5G could offer.

I don't believe that most tablets/phones would be able to do anything useful* with data at the rate that 5g might deliver, mostly, the data will still be throttled on board unless the train has virtually nobody using the wi-fi.
* That is using the data other than downloading massive files.

 

[stuu]

A pedant writes that 5g and WiFi are discrete technologies. Presumably this is upgrading the link between on-train WiFi and the Internet, but it's a bit ambiguous

 

[stuving]

This evo rail system provides backhaul - it connects the train's WiFi to the internet (though SWR may use it for their own purposes too). It uses 5G radio standards, but it has nothing to do with mobile phones and isn't in a 5G band. It has its own pole-mounted fixed terminals along the track and trains can't talk to anything else, and the lineside terminals can only talk to the trains (by radio).

It uses a mmW band (millimetric wavelength), but up at 54-71 GHz (which is not even being considered for public 5G) That means it doesn't go round corners or through stuff at all, and only works at short range. For SWR they are planning 56 such terminals along 70 km; on the Isle of Wight they had to be closer than that as it's a more wiggly line.

So it is genuinely a piece of new technology developed just for the railways and with support from the railways (First and NR). That's quite unusual, and if it goes in soon it will be much quicker than is traditional for anything new. But isn't that label "5G" really confusing?

 

[jon0844]

A pedant writes that 5g and WiFi are discrete technologies. Presumably this is upgrading the link between on-train WiFi and the Internet, but it's a bit ambiguous

Given how many posts I see on Facebook from people saying 'is Virgin Wi-Fi down for you too?' and the like, I guess it's a bit like people who think that if they spent £2,500 on energy they won't pay any more - and many journalists seem unaware of how things work too.

My understanding of this news would be that the modems in the onboard train equipment is being upgraded to allow connection to 5G. You will still need 5G coverage to benefit, so it may make little to no difference for some time - but it IS good news.

[Edit: Stuving has explained that this is in fact a bespoke solution - so that's actually great news. However, I fully expect that the systems used onboard trains in general WILL be upgraded and I believe that Icomera systems are modular so quite easy to do (if not cheap) which means there is scope to improve speeds on regular lines before lineside works take place - albeit at the mercy of the networks and their coverage and 5G availability]

 

[fgwrich]

Have to agree with some of the comments mentioned above, I too find Basingstoke to London to be fairly stable until you reach Farnborough main, then from there to Woking (particularly around Brookwood) it is nigh on useless until you hit the outskirts of Woking again. But the worst section on the SWML is the blackhole of Winchester. As noted above by Pompeyfan, Micheldever and Shawford both seem to be ok but Winchester is another area of poor signal.

 

[Snow1964]

Have to agree with some of the comments mentioned above, I too find Basingstoke to London to be fairly stable until you reach Farnborough main, then from there to Woking (particularly around Brookwood) it is nigh on useless until you hit the outskirts of Woking again. But the worst section on the SWML is the blackhole of Winchester. As noted above by Pompeyfan, Micheldever and Shawford both seem to be ok but Winchester is another area of poor signal.

There are lot more holes than this on SWR network
Poor Totton-Christchurch (and in some parts of New Forest, barely even get a 2G signal)
Basingstoke-Exeter has more gaps than good signal
Poole-Dorchester is generally poor
Gaps from Twickenham to Wokingham too

They are actually installing it, on one for the sections with better mobile coverage, which is slightly illogical. To paraphrase Government speak it is levelling down, ignore the poorer areas

 

[boiledbeans2]

This evo rail system provides backhaul - it connects the train's WiFi to the internet (though SWR may use it for their own purposes too). It uses 5G radio standards, but it has nothing to do with mobile phones and isn't in a 5G band. It has its own pole-mounted fixed terminals along the track and trains can't talk to anything else, and the lineside terminals can only talk to the trains (by radio).

So how do they get the signal to the lineside terminals? By cables running parallel to the track?

 

[stuving]

So how do they get the signal to the lineside terminals? By cables running parallel to the track?

This was said by the promoters last year:

An IP based trackside network ensures train data is passed at up to 10Gb/s to and from the internet. This maintains the exceptionally low latency of the radio network, whilst keeping the active components to the minimum. This is further enhanced by breakout to the internet at regular intervals to ensure end-to-end traffic management to maintain performance even when at its busiest with every train consuming 1Gb/s each rather than sharing it.

I'd expect that to be fibre running in the trackside conduits, laid for this purpose - or is it already there? Network Rail's CP5 Strategic Business Plan (2013) contained this:

NRT needs to deliver 4G mobile data services for future train operational needs, ORBIS trackside applications and passenger Wi-fi. Our strategy is to partner with one or more partners, using their spectrum and our physical masts and backhaul assets to build this network at least cost to Network Rail. This in turn will drive value added service provision and help meet strategic themes.

That was to use NR's fibre lineside network as its basis, and be was later announced as a DfT programme and to be in use by 2017. So maybe, after the mandatory 5 year wait, it is still the plan. Or it may be a bit of both - a separate network using unused fibres already there.

 

[Skie]

Confusingly named (it’s not delivering 5g to people and arguably isn’t using 5g anywhere) but it’s very similar to the Merseyrail Train Connectivity Information System. That is already built and is just awaiting the new units. It has a lineside fibre network and poles to up/downlink with the trains which allow operational use (cctv, otmr etc) and the spare bandwidth can be used for passenger Wi-Fi.

 

[jon0844]

5G can be used by industry using bands not available to consumer handsets, including mmWave frequencies that is utilised in factories (using many sites, so as not to be blocked by moving machinery etc).

5G is really just about the encoding of data on the radio network and isn't really significantly different to 4G.

 

[stuving]

These generation labels like 5G are important for mobile radio systems, to allow customers to know which phones work with which networks, and when a new "G" comes along that they can't use it yet. But for 4G, 3G, and (retrospectively) 2G, there were other terms for the radio signals being used (or the standard defining that). So, while LTE is the radio standard that 4G networks use, you can talk about another use of it without giving non-technical readers the idea you were talking about a mobile network.

You might still get arguments about whether it's LTE or some variant like LTE Advanced, but that really belongs at a more technical level of writing. However, with 5G there isn't a similar term - we only have 5G for both, so you end up with "5G mobile networks use 5G radio technology". So that, I think, is the root of the confusion here.

In the case of the Merseyrail system, the radio links are an off-the-shelf system (FibreinMotion) from Radwin. Assuming the kit is exactly as advertised, they use 5-6 GHz so it will have to coexist with 5 GHz WiFi and other unlicensed uses of the band. That means using the same channel sharing, though the signal format can be different. It also has to cope with propagation in the tunnels, even if they are quite large (by London Underground standards). I gather it's not in use yet, and it will be interesting to see how well it all works.

I did find some information about the trackside network cabling that suggests sharing of NR's fibre cables is likely on SWR. Merseyrail paid for 432-fibre cable be be put in throughout their network, to then be transferred to NR with the use of 144 fibres retained, of which 50 are needed for TCIS. Clearly they are not short of capacity! In fact, NR have a programme since last year to sell network capacity to outside users in some areas (e.g. TransPennine), and are inviting other telecomms operators to share the cost of installing new trackside fibre cables.

 

[Recessio]

Oh for gods sakes, why introduce yet another proprietary equipment that's gonna be a complete pain in the *rse to maintain in the future, when they could just cut a deal with the mobile networks to put up standard 5G masts and therefore also improve connectivity for passengers and locals?

 

[Mordac]

http://www.projectmapping.co.uk/ has very good schematic maps, although they can be hard to work with on a phone screen.

 

[jon0844]

Oh for gods sakes, why introduce yet another proprietary equipment that's gonna be a complete pain in the *rse to maintain in the future, when they could just cut a deal with the mobile networks to put up standard 5G masts and therefore also improve connectivity for passengers and locals?

Should be no issues maintaining an IP based system. The change from 3G to 4G was a big headache for mobile operators, but 4G to 5G is pretty simply - as will be 5G to 6G and beyond.

A lot of network equipment now is software based, so even easier to upgrade.

 

[Gigabit]

Frustrating this as no doubt Wi-Fi on the trains will be good but this can't be used by the operators to improve their coverage. Just sounds like a poor lack of planning/thinking to me.

 

[Sean Emmett]

All this effort for wifi!

Would prefer SWR to focus on running the trains, making sure the toilets work.

For heaven's sake let's get the basics right first, before divesting resources on this.

 

[Wychwood93]

All this effort for wifi!

Would prefer SWR to focus on running the trains, making sure the toilets work.

For heaven's sake let's get the basics right first, before divesting resources on this.

Agree. Pre-pandemic(?) my wife and myself doing a Christchurch-Weymouth - 10-car. Due to no functioning toilets in the front five it was everyone wanting to go beyond Bournemouth had to get off and go to the rear five - including a wheelchair passenger. Once everyone had moved it was a further delay, obviously, to shunt the front five out of the way for the rear five 'the train' could proceed to Weymouth. For one toilet to be be out of use is unfortunate.......etc.

 

[pompeyfan]

Agree. Pre-pandemic(?) my wife and myself doing a Christchurch-Weymouth - 10-car. Due to no functioning toilets in the front five it was everyone wanting to go beyond Bournemouth had to get off and go to the rear five - including a wheelchair passenger. Once everyone had moved it was a further delay, obviously, to shunt the front five out of the way for the rear five 'the train' could proceed to Weymouth. For one toilet to be be out of use is unfortunate.......etc.

I guess the options are send the front 5 with no working toilets or send the rear 5 with a 5 - 10 minute delay.

There’s only so many places Desiros can be tanked, and if one of the places are out of use it can cause units to fill up quicker.

I’m led to believe that even though there’s no additional places where they can be CET’d, with the boom in leisure travel it’s even more common at weekends for toilets to fill up quickly, not helped by there inevitably being engineering works somewhere.

I believe there was talk back in 2017 for several extra places to receive CET equipment (Woking yards, Basingstoke country yard, Weymouth Jersey) but the money was never made available.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Brookwood Pirbright Junction - Aldershot is an absolute nightmare. I get cut off every time.

 

[AM9]

All this effort for wifi!

Would prefer SWR to focus on running the trains, making sure the toilets work.

For heaven's sake let's get the basics right first, before divesting resources on this.

Agreed. A reliable 1Gb/s feed to the train is more than adequate, - even if there was a simultaneous demand from 20% of the passengers on a peak train, (e.g. a 10-car fast train to Soton, would give a 5Mb/s speed for general browsing to seek important information) is unlikely to be inadequate. Remember, this is not a 'Regus mobile' service and passengers just using the train as a means to get from A to B should not be paying for those who would use the on-train wi-fi as their 'free bulk download service' or 100Mb/s streaming service.