Southern Railway is a train operating company owned by the Govia franchise, and serving passengers in the south of England. The London Victoria to Brighton line is Southern’s busiest line. Serving over 30 million passenger journeys per annum along its 50 miles (80 km) of track, Southern was keen to offer their passengers value added services.

The challenge was to provide a seamless passenger WiFi internet service whilst travelling along the entire Brighton Mainline route, including solving the problem of large 3G coverage gaps where traditionally, mobile users lost connection. Furthermore, as Southern was unable to invest in any of the infrastructure, Nomad had to find an alternative business model to ensure the project proceeded.

Nomad developed the world’s first genuine on-train broadband switching solution incorporating both 3G and 802.16 (pre-WiMAX) technologies. Not only did this include installing radio equipment on 14 Bombardier Class 377 Electrostars trains, but also building over 40 WiMAX radios at 30 locations along the track. The system was designed and implemented with the logic to continuously choose the best signal with extremely low latency, so that end users would not notice the switch. Individual passengers were able to receive typical home broadband speeds and in areas of 802.16 coverage, often more than 2Mbps.

Nomad understood Southern’s requirements to work with a trusted partner, and part of Southern’s needs meant fixed long term support as the service would run the length of the franchise and potentially longer. Nomad agreed a concession model with Southern whereby Nomad sourced the project funding. The solution involved partnering with T-Mobile to provide the chargeable passenger facing service (which was branded T-Mobile HotSpot), which also operated as part of T-Mobile’s large national hotspot.

Nomad worked with both Southern and T-Mobile to develop and implement a number of creative marketing initiatives to raise awareness of the service. T-Mobile also brought important insights to the way their 3G network was designed which allowed the on-train solution to obtain connections speeds well in excess of the norm.

In addition to developing an extremely compelling passenger internet service, Nomad also used the on-train solution to showcase its ability to integrate with additional on-train systems for train operator benefits. One such application was the linking of the Nomad solution to the on-board CCTV and forward facing cameras. Nomad was able to demonstrate remote real-time CCTV feeds whilst the train was travelling at speed, even whilst in tunnels. This demonstrated the ability for a rail operator to remotely view the inside of a train carriage during an incident.

As one of the first high-speed data on-train connections in the world, Nomad’s system has been in operation for almost five years. This value added service enabled Southern to provide an additional dimension to its traditional service and to attract new passengers to its service. By using a combination of both WiMAX and 3G cellular connections then Nomad’s system has proven the constant high-speed data link, whilst travelling at high speeds

In addition, T-Mobile has won a number of awards for the pioneering service on the Brighton Mainline, which has included beating stiff competition from both O2 and Skype to win Technology Project of the Year at the CNET Networks UK Technology Awards 2005. Key highlights were;

Award winning: T-Mobile’s world-first broadband Wi-Fi on trains service

T-Mobile’s service recognised as a pioneering innovation setting the industry standard