The deployment of FRMCS (5G dedicated to railways) in Europe is part of the ERTMS project trajectory, with a specific timeline and constraints. The historic band, 900 MHz, will be preserved, and a new spectral band around 1900 MHz will be allocated. Beyond technical choices, the question is also economic: how to finance, operate, and valorize a network that meets railway requirements while optimizing total cost of ownership and operation?
In France, the Infrastructure Steering Council estimates a cost of €120,000/km (2021 euros) to deploy FRMCS on lines already equipped with GSM-R, excluding onboard equipment. It is important to explore all deployment options—public, private, or hybrid—and to develop scenarios tailored to each country, considering existing GSM-R equipment, local priorities, and network specifics.
Why a mix is often necessary
Every kilometer is unique. Main lines, tunnels, and dense urban areas require specific levels of availability and performance. Conversely, some secondary lines may have a higher unit cost per useful site. In practice, a mix of approaches allows balancing performance, timelines, and economic sustainability. Depending on the context, it can be advantageous to combine dedicated networks, subscription to mobile operator services, passive infrastructure sharing, or even satellite complements in very isolated areas. Hybrid projects, like initiatives such as the 5G RACOM project, demonstrate the feasibility of architectures combining railway-owned networks and resources from public operators, leveraging use segmentation.
Overview of financing and operation models
Internal funding:
- Advantages: End-to-end control, mastery of evolutions and maintenance cycles, managed coverage tailored to the railway line, resilience aligned with your strategy and risks.
- Points of vigilance: Higher initial CAPEX, asset management, and telecom skills to be sustained. Considering timelines and strategies, uncertain funding sources may already be apparent.
Private sector subscription (mobile operators, satellite services):
- Advantages: 5G and active sharing mechanisms enable cost savings and faster deployment. Coverage extension and resilience in very isolated zones via satellite services.
- Points of attention: Ensuring prioritization in degraded situations, dependency on a provider, satellite latency, and compatibility with desired service functions. What are the backup options if sites are lost?
Capitalizing on passive assets:
- Leasing locations from mobile operators or vice versa, thus enabling infrastructure valorization.
- Sharing elements: towers, power supplies, technical rooms. Useful for cost control.
At this stage, the question is no longer “which option is best in theory?” but “which mix works on your lines, considering your constraints and timeline, such as:”
- Terrain and performance: line typology, tunnel footprint, energy and backhaul availability, expected service levels (safety-critical, local resilience).
- Economics and phasing: CAPEX/OPEX, possibility of reusing existing GSM-R infrastructure, migration trajectory, and operational impact.
- Governance and compliance: roles and responsibilities, SLAs, regulatory requirements, cybersecurity.
Our Sofrecom support
We assist from start to finish to turn your choices into results:
- Macro-economic framing and financing scenarios: multi-option business cases (public, private, mixed), CAPEX/OPEX sensitivity, budget roadmap.
- Radio design and engineering: sizing, targeted coverage per line segment, propagation studies, performance measurements and audits.
- Network architecture and slicing: architecture design, critical service isolation, security and resilience requirements.
- Operation models and SLAs: roles and responsibilities, operational processes, quality indicators, contracts with MNOs/towercos, penalty/bonus mechanisms.
- GSM-R to FRMCS transition support: coexistence, equipment lifespan extension strategy, migration plan.
- Assistance with procurement: tender documents, evaluation criteria, benchmarks, lessons learned.
Let’s take action
Are you preparing a FRMCS framing, a tender, or looking to challenge a financing scenario? Let’s organize a discussion. We offer a discovery workshop to map your challenges (technical, economic, regulatory), qualify, and define the analyses to be conducted.
FRMCS Glossary
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FRMCS: Future Railway Mobile Communication System, future railway mobile system based on 5G
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ERTMS: European Rail Traffic Management System interoperability framework
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GSM-R: current 2G railway mobile network
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MVNO: Mobile Virtual Network Operator
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Network slicing: active sharing mechanism creating isolated virtual network slices with dedicated SLAs
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Passive sharing: sharing of non-active infrastructure
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Towerco: company specializing in telecom tower management
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SLA: Service Level Agreement (contractual service commitments)
