Our decrypts 2022-06-20
June 14, 2022
Essential or Superfluous? Icomera, the world’s leading provider of transportation connectivity services, highlights the link between the digital and green transitions
February 2022, near Hamburg, Germany—While on his way to court, a lawyer was forced to stop due to a train breakdown. With no hope of arriving on time for the hearing, he connects to the train’s Wi-Fi and is able to attend and defend his case remotely. Beyond this anecdote, this event illustrates the benefits of technological advances in connectivity services for public transportation.
Climate change, global pandemics, security, rising passenger expectations, and increased demand for real-time data: onboard digital services—and Wi-Fi quality in particular—are at the heart of the future of travel and are key elements in the transition toward smarter, safer, and more environmentally friendly mobility.
An in-depth look with Paul Barnes, Marketing Director at Icomera, a subsidiary of EQUANS France.
Wireless connectivity on public transportation—whether on trains, trams, or buses—is becoming increasingly common. How can this be explained?
This growing trend is driven by three major factors: societal change, technological innovations, and sustainable development. The rise of digitalization occurred just a few decades ago, but it has completely transformed the relationship between people and information, which is now instantaneous and accessible to everyone, everywhere, provided they have a smart device. Whether it’s connecting with friends and family, staying informed, working, planning a trip, or adapting to the unexpected—like what happened to our lawyer—the digital age provides essential tools to make life and daily tasks easier. The COVID-19 crisis has only accelerated and reinforced this trend, with technology enabling people to work and remain productive anywhere—not just in the office.
Since Icomera developed the world’s first in-vehicle Wi-Fi service in 2003, technology has continued to advance and open up opportunities for operators. The first iPhone in 2007, the widespread adoption of smartphones, commercial 4G networks beginning to appear in 2012, and 5G in 2019: each major milestone has brought new conveniences to users and ultimately raised living standards and associated expectations. Finally, environmental awareness has played an indirect but essential role in the digitization of public transportation, especially since the transportation sector is responsible for about one-fifth of global CO2 emissions. As a result, travel habits are gradually shifting from individual modes of transportation toward public transit systems such as trains, trams, and buses. Night trains, in particular, have gained popularity, with networks established throughout Europe. This trend has accelerated the demand for the digitization of public transportation, allowing passengers to remain productive, informed, or entertained throughout their journey.
What technical challenges must be addressed to ensure optimal connectivity on trains, in terms of both speed and reliability?
At the heart of Icomera’s technology is aggregation, which uses all available cellular networks along the route to provide passengers with the fastest and most reliable connection on board.
Imagine a small village of 1,000 people approaching a mobile network operator’s (MNO) cell tower at over 200 km/h and then speeding away just as quickly. The tower will struggle to connect so many users at once and manage the “handoff” to the next tower without the connection being interrupted or lost. Add to this the fact that most personal mobile devices cannot connect to more than one MNO at a time, the poor network coverage and capacity along roads, and the metal construction of public transportation vehicles—which tends to block 99.9% of external radiofrequency signals, a phenomenon known as the “Faraday cage effect”— Throughout its history, the digital industry has succeeded in providing solutions to these various challenges.
Thanks to the SureWAN algorithm—Icomera’s foundational technology invented in 1999, the very year the term “Wi-Fi” was first used— train routers have been able to connect to multiple cellular networks and towers simultaneously, thereby maximizing data capacity and availability and minimizing data loss during transfers. Thanks to antennas specially designed for rooftop mounting, wireless connectivity providers were able to circumvent the Faraday cage effect by capturing all available capacity from 4G and 5G networks around the vehicle and delivering it in full to the onboard network. In addition, new milestones have been reached in terms of data throughput and connection reliability thanks to multi-modem aggregation routers, which combine the capacity of multiple cell towers from different mobile network operators.
More recently, 5G technology has opened up new horizons for wireless connectivity on trains. In 2020, Icomera became the first company to successfully design, build, and test a 5G-compatible router for the rail industry. During the trial, the train traveling from Stockholm to Gothenburg in Sweden achieved a new industry-record data throughput, receiving more than one gigabit of data per second using only commercial networks. To illustrate this achievement, “gigabit” speeds are equivalent to passengers simultaneously streaming more than 10,000 songs or 200 high-definition movies.
What are the prospects for technological development?
As is often the case with digital technologies, the applications are countless, even limitless. Thus, beyond Wi-Fi for passengers, Internet connectivity provides solutions to many problems around the world. Among its many applications, the technology can support live streaming and data analysis from onboard security cameras, in-flight entertainment portals streaming the latest movies and TV shows, passenger information in formats more accessible to the visually impaired, the hearing impaired, or the elderly, as well as onboard sensors that monitor rail tracks and improve transportation efficiency. Icomera recently had the opportunity to deploy these various systems in the United Kingdom, France, on the Lossan rail corridor in the United States, with VIA Rail in Canada, and on the iconic Bergen Line in Norway.
As public transportation is increasingly seen as the key to a more sustainable future and competition among operators intensifies, passengers’ rising expectations cannot be ignored. Having high-end internet connectivity is no longer considered a luxury for travelers, but rather a mandatory service that operators must offer to remain competitive and attractive. As technology advances, passengers are becoming less and less tolerant of mid-range equipment on trains, which is insufficient to support the increasingly ubiquitous use of video—whether for professional or personal purposes. On the contrary, high-quality Wi-Fi offers a significant advantage to operators who have adopted it, particularly in attracting “Generation Z,” digital natives born since the mid-1990s, who are less inclined to drive and more aware of issues related to the climate crisis. This demographic will play a key role in the return to public transportation after the pandemic. However, Generation Z is also the most demanding group of consumers, as they have grown up in a world where services are provided almost instantly and where expectations for quality and reliability are very high.
To meet these expectations, it is now up to transit operators to adopt these new standards, seize the many opportunities offered by high-speed internet connectivity, and lead the way toward a smarter, safer, and greener future for the entire mobility sector. During this transition, continued research and development by digital companies is essential to keep innovating and enhancing the appeal of public transportation.