Thalys International

Continuous Wireless Broadband Internet access while travelling between France,
Belgium, Holland and Germany at 300km/hr

In 2007, Thalys selected a consortium, which includes 21NET, Nokia Siemens Networks and Telenet, to become the first international high speed railway company to deliver true broadband Internet access to passengers travelling between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne. As of October 2008, the complete Thalys fleet of 26 trains is equipped with ThalysNet, the high-speed wireless Internet access provided by 21Net and activated by Nokia Siemens Networks and Telenet.

Within the Consortium, 21Net responsibility concern:

• The provision and supervision of the satellite based internet link using its 30RR satelitte antennas.

• The homogolation by 4 the railway partners (SNCF,SNCB, DB, NS) of every onboard equipment of the overall solution provided by Consortium, including Wi-Fi on-train components and central server.

• The co-management of the whole project as internet operator in the 4 Thalys countries.
  

The 21Net system combines low-profile tracking antennas mounted on the trains roof with two-way “Ku-band” satellite. The use of two-way Ku-band satellite transmission enables 21Net to deliver high bandwidth (2MBit/s by 512kBit/s) uncontended connectivity to the train which can be shared by simultaneous users. This puts 21Net in an entirely different class to existing competitor systems, which rely on narrowband connections which are then shared between the simultaneous users on the train.

21Net has mastered the use of a unique mobile DVB/RCS modem to share the satellite bandwidth across all the trains of the fleet, allocating bandwidth on demand according to the usage level of the train. With 21Net, Satellite bandwidth scales linearly with Internet use.

21Net has also obtained approval for all the equipment used in the global solution offered on board Thalys trains.

Since the commercial launch of ThalysNet, nine out of ten interviewed users have evaluated the service as “good” or “very good”.

Read the ThalysNet
Press Release