Hughes the world?s leading provider of satellite broadband services, managed network services and products for businesses, governments and consumers on Thursday, announced that it has been awarded the mandate to set up the first dedicated VSAT (very small aperture terminal) hub for the Indian Railways.
This would allow the Indian Railways to offer a host of mission critical applications like disaster communication system, accident relief train (ART), unreserved ticketing system (UTS) and freight operating information system (FOIS) in the remote areas. In addition, the railways is also planning to introduce internet access on running the trains and is currently undertaking a proof of concept in one of the trains between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, Hugehs said.
Speaking on the development, K Krishna, AVP marketing, Hughes India, said, ?We have been working with the
Indian Railways for the past two years by supporting them to run their FOIS applications on the hired hub. Their decision to partner with us as they embark to set up a dedicated VSAT hub for the Indian Railways validates their confidence in our services and the efficacy of satellite as a medium of choice to run mission critical and consumer facing applications across the length and breadth of the country. We look forward to help them build greater efficiencies into their system that will affect a wide population of consumers.?
The commissioning of the dedicated VSAT hub, will allow the railways to connect 1,000 locations across 19 states as against 200 earlier. This new system will help the railways to have voice and data connectivity for their services at remotely located stations where fixed and mobile network of the telecom operators had not reached even after a massive revolution in the telecom industry in recent times.
Disaster communication system and unreserved ticketing system terminals are very critical applications for the railways. Once successful, this will help the railways in proliferating UTS terminals to remote areas and city centres as well as quick establishment of communication system at disaster management site.
For disaster management, the railways have already planned trackable Hughes VSAT terminals that will allow quick tracking and establishment of communication at accident sites in less than 15-20 minutes.
