Study on feasibility of SATCOM for railway communication

Final Report
Methodology
newly-built stations for every existing, upgraded GSM-R station) has been
considered, generating an open range of possible economic outcomes.
Maintenance and other costs have been sized to equal a yearly 5% of the CAPEX
investment as is frequent best practice in such pre-feasibility assessments.
Value-added services specific assumptions
This assumptions focus on the specific analysis for value-added services for revenue generation
The number of passengers will grow in alignment with the population‘s own expected growth
rate in the geographic and time scope of the analysis.
The railway market growth has been extrapolated from 10 years past data.
The revenues are constant regardless of the technology used to provide the service. Hence, a
‗platform-independent‘ approach is assumed from railway undertakings, since passengers are
implicitly assumed to be willing to pay for a given service regardless of the actual
technological platform supporting it.
The revenue model is based on a baseline tariff per user (as the sole source of revenue for
railway undertakings).
Infrastructure managers are not expected to benefit from the provision of added-value
services within the scope of this analysis.
Adding broadband services will not alter the railway passenger demand expectations.
It is assumed that there are no constraints regarding channel capacity for SATCOM solutions
on the space side.
Broadband services include 20 Mbps of shared broadcast on forward link (downlink) every
100 trains, and 2Mbps on return link (uplink) data traffic per train.
9.3.2 Methodology of the Cost Benefit Analysis
This section describes the methodology, the models and the assumptions used to derive the costs and
revenue due to the use of SATCOM for railway critical safety applications and safety communications.
9.3.2.1 Approach to the Analysis
The objective of this CBA is to determine which technologies are more promising for GSMR
replacement. Hence, the analysis has been aligned towards a complete European assessment and
overall lifecycle cost. The analysis uses a top down approach to determine the main costs incurred to
each stakeholder, and the cost model differentiates cost sources depending on their recurrence. In
addition, the model also clearly differentiates between terrestrial and SATCOM solutions due to their
inherent differences in architecture and cost sources.
Hence, the following concepts are defined:
CAPEX, or capital expenses, are the non-recurring expenses required to develop and build the
technology and systems. They are incurred for all the systems, infrastructure, terminals, and
Doc.Nº: SRAIL-FNR-010-IND
Edit./Rev.: 1/1
Date: 16/02/2017
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