Mobile communications: No 5G for German trains
German trains will not get 5G for the time being. The Rheinische Post reports on the basis of a request from the Union faction to the Federal Ministry of Transport. The repeaters used in the trains are capable of LTE at most and should not be upgraded.
Internet on German railway lines is always an issue and the supply is not that simple. Rapid cell changes and tunnels make it difficult to provide stable, nationwide coverage. And 5G seems to be a long way off: In response to a small request from the Union faction, the Federal Ministry of Transport confirmed that 5G is not provided for in the cooperation agreement. Nothing is announced as to the reasons and is a matter of speculation at the moment. There are technical possibilities, but they are not without problems and the cost factor should also play a role.
Basically, you have to solve several problems with Internet in trains: On the one hand, the construction acts as a Faraday cage, on the other hand, trains move between the radio cells at high speed, which necessitates many handovers in a short time. This is at the expense of bandwidth and stability. Deutsche Bahn also points out that the high speeds in long-distance trains are difficult to reconcile with the frequency bands used at just under 4 GHz.
Another problem: The repeaters in the trains to overcome the cage only master the GSM and the LTE standard – so for experts not even 4G, which is known here as LTE Advanced. And since the repeaters in the trains can only handle LTE, there is probably no need to expand the radio cells on the routes either. And if 5G is available, the railways cannot use it. Ultimately, the following applies to train passengers: the current state of the art will not provide more than LTE and its speeds and, as the Union’s request shows, there are apparently no acute plans to change this. The competitor Flixtrain probably has no plans to convert its technology to 5G either.
The reason for the procedure could be that one shies away from the investment costs due to a system change. New and modernized train sets should do without repeaters and instead be equipped with windows that overcome the Faraday cage. The signal would then be available directly on the train; However, the problem with high speeds and frequent cell changes remains. With the omission of the metal coating on the windows, the thermal sun protection for which it was applied is also no longer available.
Source: Rheinische Post
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