Practical Case Study: On-train network

Rural communities are benefiting from government initiatives to improve home broadband and mobile connectivity, resulting from voter pressure on local representatives. No such functional collective exists for train passengers to influence government policy. Further, where passengers have been canvassed (for example, by Transport Focus), more fundamental needs around the journey itself have overshadowed not being able to use travel time effectively.

The UK railway is not a single entity, but an amalgam of government, arms-length government, government concessionaires and commercial entities. When considering train passenger connectivity, this collective must also be extended to include the government regulated telecoms operators. The railway trackside, and passenger trains, are also a very expensive environment in which to deploy and continuously upgrade technologies. The EvoRail experience of deploying trackside Gigabit train connectivity from Basingstoke and Earlsfield on the South West Main Line has demonstrated unsustainable challenge and cost.

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This lack of common benefit vision, or a compelling reason for change, is the underlying cause of a historical policy, market and industry failure to deliver a satisfactory connectivity service for train passengers. Government and industry lack universally understood and evidenced insights as to the economic and societal value of train passengers being able to continue their connected lifestyle whilst taking the train. The missing evidence not-only covers the direct benefits of being connected, but also the opportunity cost of failing to drive-up ridership by offering enhanced time value.

1. To understand the societal and economic value of that usage as part of a train passenger journey. Section 5 identifies potential areas of benefit that need to be explored in a formal and reasoned expert study. This will need to include a literature search for other rail deployments, interviews of digital content and service providers, leading to a robust analysis and reporting.
2. To understand connectivity requirements eg speed, security, data load, update rate on a per-user and per-train basis. There is currently no available evidence as to what train passengers use connectivity for, and what economical and societal value this creates. Ofcom’s 2018 report (Advice to Government on improving rail passenger access to data services) provides a credible technology-driven pitch but appears to be based upon extrapolation and aggregation of current device usage trends, rather than considering purpose or value.
3. To scope and undertake validatory testing of the research to assure its fitness for the creation of government policy and business cases. This is likely to require a greater than normal scrutiny of the digital activity of train connectivity users and possibly require specific governance and user opt-in. A currently funded E-W Rail passenger connectivity trial, along with the newly introduced EvoRail South West Main Line WiFi service, are seen to be credible partners for the validation.

Following a successful outcome, and with a route for government and/or industries to evidence benefits, opportunities will emerge to improve passenger connectivity on an area, line of route or national basis. These include:

• Government policy change, resulting in direct funding for strategic partnerships and capitaldeployment.
• Changes to Government regulator (ORR, Ofcom) franchise or licence obligations to the rail and/or telecoms industries resulting in action by those parties.
• Commercial initiatives arising out of a better understanding of how to build a business ecosystem which supports capital expenditure and a sustainable flow of revenues to the deployer.
• The development of a cohesive industry view as to how a future spend by Network Rail for the migration of GSM-R to FRMCS could become part of a positive business case to deliver both FRMCS and passenger connectivity in a more efficient way.

Resources:

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As previously observed, for any commercial solution to the problem, the stakeholder community is a complex set of pseudo-government (Network Rail and some train operators) government franchisees (most train operators) and asset-owning commercial entities (rolling stock companies). There is currently no common vision, policy or action across this community to realise an affordable step-change in passenger connectivity. Without quantified evidence of benefit, it is difficult to see how a robust benefit case can be built by any of the parties previously discussed.

The community of telecoms providers (including Network Rail themselves) is equally complex and fragmented, with no single entity in a leading position to realise an attractive commercial model for a ubiquitous connectivity offering. To date, an opportunistic collection of mobile operators, neutral host providers, trackside and train-top solution suppliers have harvested the low-hanging fruit of connectivity revenue loss (MNO not-spots on high passenger flow routes, including London’s underground railways) and specific one-off funded opportunities.

However, with the recommendation for research identified in the previous section and the potential areas of benefit identified in the following section of this case study, it is believed that the stakeholder community could build a viable commercial model to (in the words of Daniel Susskind’s New Statesman article) “Hurry up and fix the wi-fi”. With an apparent commitment to realise Great British Railways under the emerging Conservative and Labour election manifestos as (respectively) a guiding/directing mind, a incentivised recipient for a commercial foundation could emerge.

For this reason, section 3 of this case study recommends research into the economic and societal benefits of connecting train passengers, where potential benefit streams need exploration (commissioned research) and validation (the proposed pilot) as follows:

• The value of productive passenger time over all UK train journeys was assessed by economist Daniel Susskind as being in the order of £18bn a year. In his New Statesman article, he went on to estimate the value of the time lost on trains due to bad or absent wi-fi being £376m a year. This indicates the potential to quantify value to individuals and employers, with consequential gains to GDPR.
• A richly connected passenger also represents a commercial opportunity for discretionary purchase of digital services, this promoting the commercial development of new digital products and services; again, positively impacting GDPR. The UK digital marketplace has shown strong innovation potential in the creation of applications for infotainment, journey planning, guidance and personal welfare (including for vulnerable travellers).
• Societal benefits can likely be expressed in financial terms where, for example, the care costs of physical and mental health may be reduced if a continuous user connection supports digital healthcare; possibly AI-powered. Again, the UK digital marketplace is delivering strongly in e-Care and wider adoption is likely if these technologies function correctly during train journeys.
• Driving passenger numbers upwards will be vital to deliver government sustainability goals and greater ridership, combined with intelligent demand management stands to make the railway more affordable for taxpayers and users. A communicable rich connectivity experience could actively drive-up train usage whereas an experience which is comparatively worsening with time stands to make rail an increasingly unattractive option for travellers. It is also likely that societal, including health, benefits can be attributed to increased rail usage, whilst not creating and adverse sustainability impact.
• A rail travel experience that represents a natural extension of a person’s life, thus making rail a de-facto part of integrated transport thinking, can further build the case for “Beeching re-opening” initiatives. The enablement of integrated transport is expected to be a strong focus for Great British Railways. The arrival of the Metaverse and the potential emergence of personal digital assistants may fuel a pragmatic inclusion of rail in personal logistics.
• Finally, and currently of understated significance, a cohesive train connectivity strategy that delivers a national capability ahead of UK rail needing to retire GSM-R could result in £bn savings in the capital cost for migration to the future FRMCS standard. A single combined ground to train data connection can also offer greater data throughputs for future railway operational use-cases than could be delivered with the modest amount of radio spectrum currently being allocated for FRMCS.

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Moreover, Innovate UK are currently funding Blu wireless to develop a wireless back haulcapability into their gigabit track to train connectivity solution and Ingram Networks toi nnovate around providing 10 gigabit track to train connectivity. Starting the list of don’ts with a technology observation, it is noted that whilst many train passengers currently make use of through-window native mobile connectivity to access digital services, it is suggested this approach is not credible for well-understood reasons:

• The penetration of signals into the carriage, even for the most “RF transparent” passenger trains, is sub-optimal resulting in poor user experience.
• Mobile networks can struggle to deliver good railway coverage due to the number of tunnels and cuttings.
• For fast moving trains carrying large numbers of passengers, mobile networks can struggle to deliver continuity of service for so many mobile devices needing to be rapidly handed from cell to cell.
• The amount of radio spectrum in the hands of mobile operators, especially spectrum suited to macro networks, is likely to be insufficient to support all user devices on a busy intercity train in addition to their non-railway users.
• The need to deploy all mobile networks in the rail corridor, even if using a “Neutral Host” distributed antenna system (ie Boldyn on LUL), may be economically suboptimal compared to a dedicated track to train network connection. 

Looking to the fragmented initiatives over two decades, there has been no clear, obvious and accountable challenge owner in government. For many years the challenge has circulated DfT, DCMS (DSIT), NIC and their respective industry bodies and agencies (eg Ofcom, ORR, Network Rail, RSSB etc) with no absolute accountability. This has resulted in no clear and consistent mandate or obligation being placed upon the telecoms or rail industries (ie mobile operators, Network Rail or passenger train operators) to deliver a meaningful connectivity service to train passengers. As previously discussed, the advent of Great British Railways may present an opportunity of a guiding/directing mind but is likely to require the evidence of benefits described in this case study.

Where on-train connectivity is delivered via WiFi (deployments funded both by train-operator and government grant) these almost exclusively use public mobile data services to connect the WiFi system back to the Internet. This has added significant costs for the train operator which have been difficult to recover from value-add services (eg paid-for WiFi, first-class upgrades etc) or ticket price increases. This often results in service rations and quotas linked to contracts between train and mobile operators, which manifest themselves as a poor WiFi service to the passenger. Future initiatives will need to look at both the deployment (cost and capability) and operation (cost and experience) aspects of delivering the on-train connectivity experience.