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Evo-rail’s rail-5G is a solution engineered by the best of Britain’s academics and engineers.

First Group has been working with the University of Bristol over the last 5 years, supported by the Department for Transport, to address the lack of mobile data coverage on the railways.

Since then, evo-rail, a rail telecoms company formed out of FirstGroup, has developed ‘rail-5G’, a mmWave technology which can meet the ever-growing demand by rail customers for high-speed connectivity by being able to provide over 1Gbps constant connectivity to trains.

MANTRA

2016/18

The first incarnation of rail-5G came in 2016 when Prof. Andrew Nix combined beamforming technology with Fixed Wireless Access in the mmWave band to demonstrate transmitting almost a gigabit on to a moving train. This spawned multiple consortiums that ended in FirstGroup leading the Dali trials.

DALI

2018/19

Whilst Mantra was a collection of components and a proof of concept, the Dali trials were to test the first generation radio system developed from Mantra in a fully functioning railway. This taught us that whilst the radio might work, networking the traffic and delivering it in a safe and cost effective way would be a greater challenge. We proved the radio was capable of over a gigabit throughput, but we urgently needed on-train integration and a trackside network, let alone a doubling of the radio’s segments range.

DALI

2018/19

DEGAS

2019/21

The Degas Programme is now nearing its completion and was about integration: on-train and trackside, whilst upgrading to the new second generation radio equipment. Degas is to proceed to the first commercial rollout which will be on one of the world’s busiest railways, South West Railways (SWR). This will start in 2021 following the final stress testing of rail-5G ahead of Network Rail’s Product Acceptance, trackside and train design approvals and compliance with a dizzying array of European health and safety regulations.

ABOUT FIRST

First Rail is one of the most experienced rail operators in the UK, with more than 550,000 passenger journeys daily last year across four Department for Transport contracted operations and two open access routes

The group have many years of experience running all types of passenger rail: long-distance, commuter, regional and sleeper services. Operating four major UK train operating companies – Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway (GWR), South Western Railway (SWR), TransPennine Express (TPE) and two open access passenger rail services, Hull Trains and Lumo. First Rail also ‘shadow operator’ on the HS2 programme and operate the London Trams service on behalf of Transport for London.

As one of the most experienced operators in the UK, we are uniquely positioned to work with our partners to add value and improve services. Across all our operations, we are working in partnership with industry partners and local stakeholders to provide better rail services, keep people moving and communities prospering across the country.