Originally published by Space Intel Report on July 19, 2024. Read the original article here.

TUPPER LAKE, NY — Bandwidth pricing and terminal certification remain hurdles to the widespread adoption of Starlink and OneWeb LEO broadband by railroads despite the good performance of both in recent trials in Britain and Lithuania, according to the companies that ran the tests.

Starlink and OneWeb are best suited for rail routes through rural areas where terrestrial connectivity is poor or intermittent. These are often trains traveling at less than full passenger capacity, in which case the cost is an issue.

For rail applications, the benefit of a LEO constellation is not so much its low latency as its look angle. Geostationary satellites are often below the tree line or other obstructions in northern latitudes.

In one series of tests of OneWeb managed by engineering consultancy CGI and co-funded by the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency, performance was judged to be fine when using OneWeb to fill in gaps in terrestrial wireless coverage.

“It went very, very well,” said Gareth Hartwell, CGI’s director of consulting services. “We had 99% coverage on the combined network. Terrestrial alone was 60%. With 100 simulated active users, the package maxed out at 80 Mbps downlink and 15 Mbps uplink, with 150 ms latency. We think we could get that down.

“Weather was terrible. It was raining heavily and the results demonstrated that it worked even in difficult conditions,” Hartwell said in a July 18 presentation at the Connected Future Transport Systems webinar, organized by c21-virtual.

Other tests on other routes, using both OneWeb with a Kymeta antenna and Starlink, reported similar successes. But rail managers factor in other considerations, and it’s here that satellite bandwidth costs and the lack of rail-certified terminals is an issue.

“Satcom prices have fallen a lot and the the gap is narrowing between the expectations of the rail industry and the current pricing, but there is still a significant gap,” Hartwell said. “People think of Starlink being cheap, but for the mobility solution it’s not that much cheaper than other solutions. It’s still too expensive for what the rail industry is looking for at the moment.”

Certification of Starlink to the EN 50155 standard, which certifies electronic equipment for rail use after testing its ability to withstand temperature, vibration, humidity and other stresses, is under way. Britain’s Clarus Networks, an authorized Starlink reseller, was cited as making progress there.

Certification will help stimulate demand, but there remains the issue of whether Starlink or OneWeb terminal builders will invest in rail-adapted designs in the absence of confirmed demand. The rail sector, for its part, is waiting for large-scale terminal production, with the hope of lower prices, before committing.

There remains a debate in the industry about just how big the rail market could be for satellite broadband. Rail, aeronautical and maritime applications face many of the same challenges of weather and required certification. But unlike the aero and maritime markets, whose need for satellite links is obvious, many of the most lucrative rail routes already have 5G access or soon will.

Lithuanian Trains has conducted experiments using Starlink on routes where terrestrial 5G is available, but spotty, and sometimes absent for several kilometers. Filling these gaps with Starlink has had the expected result of offering near-continuous connectivity, said Mindaugas Bereiša, who until recently was head of Maintenance Innovations at Lithuanian Trains.

Bereiša said Starlink offers significantly lower-speed connections than 5G, and that the price is higher. The price difference can be mitigated by limiting Starlink use to areas where terrestrial coverage is bad or absent.

The subscription charge for Starlink, Bereiša said, is an issue on trains that are not full. On crowded routes, he said, the additional cost is minimal. Lithuanian Trains will be increasing its fleet of Starlink-equipped from three trains to seven by the end of the year, with more to come.

Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), a government-owned agency whose charter is to maximize the investment from large Scottish investments, managed a test of Starlink in Scotland’s far north. The government’s goal is not to generate a profit on any investment in rail connectivity but to spread broadband access throughout the county as part of a universal service obligation.

SFT Associate Director Robert Gardner said initial assessments of Starlink on test routes were successful enough to expand the program to six trains by the end of the year. Users will be asked to assess the performance.

Originally published by Space Intel Report on July 19, 2024. Read the original article here.