Study on feasibility of SATCOM for railway communication

Final Report
Stakeholders
Finance
Technology
The materialisation of such new communications service deployment will necessarily
imply the collaboration of several stakeholders in several fields and with different
capabilities. However, for this study, only two main direct stakeholders involved with
the service provision have been considered.
Communications provision costs are covered, by the Infrastructure Manager, who deals
directly with the communications providers. These costs are then partially recovered
through the regulated service fees that Infrastructure Managers charge to Railway
Undertakings. However, in this cost assessment, this transaction has not been modelled,
since it is a two-way transaction between the two stakeholders characterised in the
analysis, and does therefore not contribute any impact on net present value. Instead, a
non-financial ―ultimate economic footprint‖ has been computed, through this very net
present value indicator, whereby Railway Undertakings are modelled as incurring the full
communications costs that they are responsible for.
Macro-economic parameters such as, inflation, population growth, demand, among
others, have not been taken into account. The objective of this study is to determine
the feasibility of the different technologies and considering a frozen growth financial
scenario provides sufficient criteria to determine which technologies have more potential
and their feasibility. Furthermore, SATCOM results are presented relative to terrestrial
results; therefore, macro-economics will have a small impact on the final solution.
The EU recommends the use of a 4% discount rate related to cohesion and
development projects. Thus, this discount rate has been assumed for each stakeholder.
Investments with a lifecycle shorter than the total time horizon for the analysis are
automatically renewed, generating new CAPEX. However, a buffer of 5 years has been
taken into account in order to avoid reinvestments in the last years, therefore accounting
for a realistic degree of lifecycle elasticity.
Interest and amortization rates are not taken into account in this study, since financial
and macro-economic analyses have been considered to fall beyond the scope of the
study, as is frequent best practice in such pre-feasibility assessments.
GSM-R will reach obsolescence by 2030 and a substitute technology is required to
provide a continued service that ensures critical safety applications.
LTE can be deployed in both broadband and narrowband forms within a frequency range
from 400 MHz (for a minimum frequency and very narrowband application), to 2.000 MHz
(for a fully broadband implementation).
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Additionally, LTE can support high data rates in broadband implementations,
provided that the deployment of base stations is sufficiently dense on the
trackside to support it even at high train speeds. In total, it has been assumed
that a broadband LTE implementation may require multiplying the existing
number of GSM-R base stations by a factor of up to four.
Given the uncertainty regarding this question, with conflicting data and lacking a
irrefutable conclusion, a range of factors from one (meaning no requirement for
extra ground stations over current GSM-R deployments) and four (meaning three
Doc.Nº: SRAIL-FNR-010-IND
Edit./Rev.: 1/1
Date: 16/02/2017
Page 139 of 285