Skip to main content

Eurotunnel offers mobile telephony in Channel Tunnel

Eurotunnel and the British mobile telephone operators EE and Vodafone have signed a ten year agreement to offer mobile services in the Channel Tunnel. Customers of both operators will have access to 2G and 3G services in the UK to France north tunnel (UK to France). Both EE and Vodafone intend to offer 4G data services throughout the tunnel in the future. This will enable passengers of both Le Shuttle and high speed passenger trains to use their mobile phone or tablet device at any point of the journe
January 9, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Eurotunnel and the British mobile telephone operators EE and 813 Vodafone have signed a ten year agreement to offer mobile services in the Channel Tunnel.  Customers of both operators will have access to 2G and 3G services in the UK to France north tunnel (UK to France).  Both EE and Vodafone intend to offer 4G data services throughout the tunnel in the future.
 
This will enable passengers of both Le Shuttle and high speed passenger trains to use their mobile phone or tablet device at any point of the journey through the Channel Tunnel. The quality of communication will be equivalent to a call made in Paris, London or anywhere above ground.

The news was confirmed and welcomed today by 7510 Axell Wireless, the British company providing the technology using a fibre optic Distributed Antenna System (DAS) to propagate mobile signals, both voice and data, throughout the tunnel.

Ian Brown, CEO of Axell Wireless explained: “Cellular connections in rail transportation are the future. Wireless coverage is the fourth utility – people expect it as a given, wherever they are.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Flexible rail ticketing system uses cloud computing
    November 26, 2012
    UK-headquartered IT consultancy firm Smart421 is to design, build and manage a new Live Sales Management system for Rail Settlement Plan (RSP). This system will provide the rail industry with a flexible, high availability cloud-based solution to support ticket on departure - the collection of rail tickets from self service ticket machines after purchasing them earlier on the web.
  • Data collection becoming a crowded market
    October 26, 2017
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • Deadlines approach for Europe’s automatic crash alert system
    September 15, 2016
    The EU-co-funded I_ HeERO (Infrastructure_ Harmonised eCall European Pilot) project is working to ensure the readiness of national networks of call centres - known as public safety answering posts (PSAPs) - to deal with automated crash alerts arriving via the continent-wide 112 emergency phone number. Following on from its HeERO and HeERO2 pre-deployment predecessors, which enjoyed €16m (US$17.76m) in EU funding, the new initiative runs from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017. It has €30.9 million (US$34.
  • Chinese company confirms Mexico train tender plans
    January 9, 2015
    China Railway Construction Corp (CRCC) has confirmed its intention to participate in the new tender for the US$3.4 billion Mexico City-Querétaro high-speed rail project. Mexico's transport and communications ministry (SCT) said draft bidding rules for the new tender would be published on 14 January. The project calls for the construction of a 210km high-speed rail link connecting Mexico and Querétaro, via the cities of Cuatitlán and Tula. The high speed train will run for 210 kilometres between Buenav