Spectral Jam Today - Selling GSMR

Somewhere, down on the very long priority list that dictates the very important things that Ofcom needs to look at and the railway wants to worry about is the spectrum used to run the railway.

Railway communications are not something that many people understand, fewer people care about and something that falls right into the nice 'other' box of concerns which face the industry. 

Even in 2024, in a world where the European Union could have broken up post Brexit and we're all still struggling through a world of commonality, not imposed by some horribly centralised 7th Railway Package, but by the suppliers, anxious to sell mass produced kit into the mass market, it is unlikely to be a general concern.

This is quite an achievement for something that is meant to be observed by two sets of regulators (The Office of Rail and Road as well as Ofcom), but the reality is that two second rate problems do not of themselves make a primary one. Which is a shame, because the challenge of spectrum is a near perfect example of how we have yet - despite great progress over the last ten years - to have joined up Government.

 "The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today." 

Does it matter?

Well, that depends very much on the type of individual you are in life. In reality, with regards to the use of GSM-R spectrum, nothing is going to stop, nothing is going to break and with a large degree of surety, nobody is going to get hurt. If you're content living in a world of 'jam tomorrow and jam yesterday', then hit the back button in your browser and forget you've ever read this far.

If you're the kind of person who can't stand to see a missed opportunity, if you're the kind of person that wants 'jam today', then it very much matters and we should look for change. Despite this, our challenge today has little to do with spectrum - which, let us be frank is an embarrassingly small slice of 2x4Mhz blocks sitting at 900Mhz - but finance.

The British Government does not have the current financial strength to keep on pouring money into the railway in the manner which it has done for the past 15 or so years. We have an obligation - admittedly a moral one - to try and unlock waste from the system we operate within if we are to have a hope of justifying the subsidies that are paid.

We need to work out new, creative ways of generating revenue for the railway.

It is this area where we are failing - we are not joined up properly in order to unlock all of the value in the railway.

Few within the railway appreciate spectrum - there is if I am honest, no need, any more than there is a need for the general public to understand what their handset is using. More to the point, there is no practical cost for the spectrum (other than nominal annual licensing charges) and so there is no financial drive to seek an alternative.

For Ofcom, they are a (relatively) small organisation and with plans to look at liberalisation of other more important pieces of spectrum in the next few years - 700Mhz and 600Mhz -  the reality is that railway spectrum will not get a look in.

Nobody has oversight on the opportunity - or the risk.

The reality is that things have moved on massively since replacing Cab Secure Radio with GSM-R came into being as a concept. In reality, when GSM-R was introduced, there was no alternative other than to use dedicated spectrum.

Times have changed, technology has moved on and in principle, spectrum can now be shared with other users. The fact that our railway standards have failed to keep up with the shift in technology is almost an aside and echoes the fact that we need to improve the cycle time of our industry in many ways.

What does that mean?

Just as a number of companies have managed successfully to run CTBC train control over LTE, we need to increase the levels of understanding to recognise that today we are at the point that application layers should be capable of replicating the railway specific communication requirements of GSM-R.

Yes, there will be multiple challenges with regards to latency and the intrinsic nature of IP communication, but we have a great history of innovation and creative problem solving in this country. Most of all, if we act with foresight, we have time - a luxury, we do not normally have.

What is the opportunity?

Financially, to some it may seem small beer, but working on a proxy of ￡25m per Mhz today, we should be able to release over ￡200m to Government with licencing fees following. That's a lot of money for an invisible asset. Across Europe, the value of unlocking 900Mhz GSM-R spectrum could be as high as ￡2bn - ￡3bn, but the reality is that we will never move to transfer away from GSM-R immediately. The cost of change will be far too high - and the system, does function today.

But the story today is about thinking ahead. Over time, the existence of railway specific telecoms and the associated inability to use COTS hardware and software will impact the ability to run the network cost efficiently, particularly in Control Period 7, when much of the existing infrastructure will become life expired.

Now, in my simply, non-technical, na?ve mind, I can't see why we couldn't keep using 900Mhz for GSM-R once it's released for use as commercial LTE. All the masts will be in the right positions - new equipment such as antennas and base stations will be required, but major items of cost (masts and other items requiring track access and civil engineering works) could be avoided.

If we're feeling more conservative, then a period of parallel operation would ensure compatibility with GSM-R while ETCS will evolve towards a bearer independent architecture. There will be work that needs to be done, ranging from spectrum modelling (propagation and interference) through to understanding the detailed migration path, but we are in a great time. We have options.                              

If we think ahead now, surely we could minimise the cost of change?

"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," Alice objected

We have before us a direction of travel, driven by the general shift of the telecoms industry a wall of obsolescence in CP7(2024-2029) and a hard stop (currently) for GSM-R in 2025.

We can wait for perfection or we can work on the principle that have the time to create a solution and forward contract sell GSM-R spectrum.

Revenue today, by selling an asset based on yesterday's technology with the surety we do not need it tomorrow, is perhaps the perfect way to demonstrate to our stakeholders that the railway now wants to give them 'Jam today' - and if we can do that with the invisible glue behind our future vision of a Digital Railway, then so much the better.

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