The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) is working to improve the quality of mobile phone communications in railway tunnels, a TRA official said yesterday.
TRA deputy director-general Chang Ying-huei (張應輝) said there were a total of 126 tunnels with a combined length of 149km along the nation’s railways, but the tunnel between Nangang (南港) and Banciao (板橋) in Taipei was the only one in which passengers could receive a mobile phone signal.
SIGNAL COVERAGE
The Nangang-Banciao Tunnel is about 21km long and provides 2G as well as 3G mobile phone signal coverage.
Many of the TRA’s tunnels are located on the North Link and South Link, and some are quite long, including the 10km Hsinkuanyin Tunnel (新觀音隧道) on the North Link and the 7km Central Tunnel (中央隧道) on the South Link.
Chang said the TRA has guidelines for establishing base stations around the tunnel areas and proposed that different telecoms carriers could be assigned to cover communications in designated zones.
While the proposal has been under discussion for years, Chang said Chunghwa Telecom was the only operator that had built any of the required infrastructure.
The company has provided infrastructure at an underground section near the Taipei Main Station.
USERS
“Other telecoms carriers are not interested [in the proposal], because there won’t be many users,” Chang said. “Even if we tried to lower the rental fees of our optical lines, the incentives to build systems remain weak.”
The TRA had previously tried to install pay phones on trains, but removed them as mobile phones became more popular.
Currently, only train conductors and drivers are equipped with special mobile phones for on-board communications.
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