Norwegian Inter-regional Carrier Selects RAD's Multiservice Access Platform to Edge Out the Competition

• Application
• - Broadband Service Provider
• Environment
• - SDH fibre backbone along the Norwegian railroad's 4,200 km (2,610 mile) track
• Challenge
• - To provide voice and data integration, ticketing, scheduling and administrative applications to railroad stations; and to provide voice and data services to business customers
• Solution
• - RAD's Multiservice Access Platform (MAP™) enables BaneTele to offer customers 2 Mbps access using G.703, V.35 and V.36 interfaces
• Benefits
• - Central management and built-in redundancy enhance reliability
• - All equipment from the same vendor (multiplexers, cross connects and modems) ensures interoperability
• - Cost-effective products lets BaneTele reduce prices to stay competitive

BaneTele is the telecommunications department of Jernbaneverket, which runs the Norwegian public railway. BaneTele's SDH fibre optic backbone spans the entire railway infrastructure, and the railway relies on this network for all internal transmissions. In the past few years, with the liberalization of the communications industry, BaneTele has begun selling network capacity commercially. Covering 4,200 km (2,610 miles) of track, BaneTele's network can serve the majority of cities in Norway. At the end of 2000, due to increased demands for communications, BaneTele issued a tender for an access solution that would provide voice and data integration between the central administrative railway site and remote stations throughout Norway. In addition, the railway wanted to implement along the entire track applications for ticketing, scheduling information and other administrative tasks.

Guaranteed Reliability

After evaluating all the vendors that participated in the tender, BaneTele selected RAD's Multiservice Access Platform (MAP) equipment, supplied by RAD's local distributor, Data Equipment. "We guarantee access 99.95% of the time throughout the year for re-routable connections and 99.6% of the time for individual lines, so we need extremely reliable equipment," says Mr. Torgeir Flesjoe, Project Engineer at BaneTele. "The redundancy built into RAD's DXC-30 and Megaplex units is therefore a very important feature for us," continues Flesjoe.

Central Management

Central management capability was also a key issue for BaneTele. "The fact that RAD was able to provide multiplexers, cross connects and modems all from a single vendor was of major importance. Smooth interoperability of all aspects of the network is crucial for the quality of service we guarantee," states Flesjoe. And the flexibility of RAD products enables BaneTele to offer customers 2 Mbps access using G.703, V.35 and V.36 interfaces. BaneTele has implemented phase I of RAD's MAP solution in the south of Norway. MAP will be deployed in central and northern Norway in later phases. The cost-effective solution enables BaneTele to sell high quality communications services at competitive prices to telecommunications operators and other customers that require transmission capacity from 2 Mbps to 2.5 Gbps. Starting January 1, 2001, BaneTele reduced its prices for broadband service to 25-30% less than those of the market leaders, and expects to significantly increase its market share as a result.