Samsung Electronics has announced that its LTE-Railway (LTE-R) network launched its official service on the 41km-long Busan Metro line 1 that covers 40 stations in the region. This is Korea’a first case of the LTE-R technology being used during operation of a train/metro.
The Busan Transportation Corporation(BTS), SK Telecom and Samsung collaborated to replace the existing analogue wireless technology used for mission critical railway operations with the new LTE-R technology. The parties have been testing the systems since February for final safety checkup. The test drive also included an interoperability test between onboard equipment on the metro and the LTE-R mobile device installed on the railway/train.
The LTE-R technology enables multimedia-based group call/SMS services on top of the voice call service. The technology equips rail operators in case of an accident because it transmits real-time video of the station to the central control center. Additionally, real-time group/individual communication is made possible between the train engineer and control center. The technology can also be used for mission critical communication.
Samsung was selected as a supplier for all five LTE-R projects in Korea since 2015. The Korean government plans to increase the distance that the LTE-R project covers to roughly 5,600km by 2025.
