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

BaneTele is the telecommunications department of Jernbaneverket, which runs the Norwegian public railway. BaneTele’s SDH fiber 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.

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.