Wireless the key to shifting freight faster

The use of Microwave Access technology, better known as WiMax, to create wide area connectivity hotspots, could change the way that businesses are run, delegates were told at last week's Convergence Oceania conference.

Guy Mason, chief information officer at English Welsh and Scottish Railway, told some of the 600 people at the Auckland conference that the freight company had 600 locomotives, 16,000 wagons, 49 depots and shunted 100 million tonnes of freight a year in Britain and Europe.

It also supplied coal to 16 power stations.

"If we stopped running, the lights would go out."

Mason said that WiMax trials held in the United Kingdom this year to create a corridor of connectivity along a railway line and 13km-wide hotspot across a depot, required the company's management to change their mindset.

The company had traditionally focused on fixed-location assets, depots, yards and stations.

"Now we focus on what's moving and the yards just happen to be places that we pause at."

Mason said WiMax filled a gap between low-distance radio identification, Bluetooth and WiFi and the expensive wide area coverage of satellite.

Since privatisation of the UK railway system in the 1990s, competition for greater efficiency had been fierce.

"If you improve that by even four or five per cent, it's worth millions of pounds on the bottom line," Mason said.

Knowing the location and activity, or inactivity, of wagons in real-time had enabled a better use of resources.

The 90km connectivity corridor, built using a handful of WiMax units on the London to Brighton line, also provided an opportunity to sell broadband connectivity to commuters.

But Mason said the benefits travelled beyond optimising freight haulage and generating new sources of revenue. The fear of breakdowns and delays racking up thousands of pounds of fines within minutes could lead to sometimes unnecessary maintenance, he said.

Real-time access to engine management systems, including data on oil composition, from locomotives travelling at 160km/h, took maintenance work off schedules and based it on need.

The wide area hotspots also led to internet-based phone calling, real-time surveillance on moving trains and closed-circuit television installation at fixed sites without laying cables.

With coal freight, "historically we would weigh the train and they [customers] would weigh the train and then we would argue about how much it weighed, which is pointless."

Convergence in technology and practice led to a shared data set, while the next step of self-billing would end that most ingrained business process - issuing invoices.

"I always want to leave the message that the end objective isn't to have the next exciting piece of technology installed ... [but] to deliver business benefits.