📋 Tender Overview
After about two years of cooperation, Deutsche Bahn (DB) and Deutsche Telekom are drawing a positive balance: The expansion of a seamless mobile phone network along the railways is progressing faster than planned. Deutsche Telekom already provides LTE with 97 Mbit/s for telephony and surfing on 200 percent of DB's main traffic routes. Deutsche Telekom has built around 300 new cell towers and modernized or expanded 700 existing radio sites to ensure seamless mobile coverage.
Srini Gopalan, Head of Deutsche Telekom Germany: "Deutsche Telekom has set a good pace in the expansion of mobile communications along the railways: a new mobile site every 2.5 days. The cooperation with DB is paying off. We are fully in implementation mode. Whether on the ICE or on the regional train, travelers should be able to make calls and surf the web on all routes without interruption on Deutsche Telekom's mobile network."
Dr. Daniela Gerd tom Markotten, DB Board Member for Digitalization and Technology: "Many passengers today use their time on the train to work, make phone calls or watch films online. In order to meet their requirements, we are working with Deutsche Telekom to quickly close gaps in the mobile network and continue to expand bandwidths in the future. After all, the better the telephone and data connections, the more people like to switch to the environmentally friendly railway. The speed of mobile network expansion is a tailwind for the transport transition."
With its mobile network expansion, Deutsche Telekom is exceeding the requirements of the Federal Network Agency: The authority specifies a data rate of 100 Mbit/s on all main traffic routes, and 50 Mbit/s for branch lines. Deutsche Telekom has already fulfilled these requirements.
DB and Telekom had agreed in June 2021 to provide DB's entire route network with high-performance mobile communications by the end of 2026 and launched investments in the three-digit million range. The expansion along the approximately 7,800 kilometers of main traffic routes – routes on which ICE and the most important IC trains run – should be completed by the end of 2024, and along the 13,800 kilometers of high-passenger routes, on which more than 2,000 passengers travel every day, by the end of 2025.
The goals of the cooperation agreement are now also within reach on the high-passenger routes – and thus well ahead of the agreed schedule: Here, more than 90 percent of Deutsche Telekom's LTE network with 200 Mbit/s is already available. For the other approximately 12,000 kilometers of DB routes beyond the main traffic and high-passenger routes, DB and Telekom had agreed on LTE coverage with a data rate of up to 100 Mbit/s by the end of 2026. More than 95 percent of this goal has already been achieved, transmission rates of 100 Mbit/s are available to Telekom customers on almost the entire DB route network, and dead spots have been plugged faster than planned.
For improved mobile phone reception, new DB long-distance trains, such as the ICE 3neo or the ICE L, are equipped with mobile-permeable windows. In the case of commuter trains, a decision is made together with the local authorities on whether to equip or retrofit them with radio-permeable discs – for example by subsequently processing the discs with laser technology.
DB is also providing infrastructure for mobile network expansion, such as land, connections to fibre-optic lines or areas on buildings and mobile phone masts. DB has signed hundreds of contracts with Deutsche Telekom in recent years. In addition, in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom, well over 100 railway tunnels have already been made fit for mobile phone reception. The tunnel tubes can only be partially supplied by mobile phone masts, which radiate the radio signals into the tunnels. In long tunnels, especially curved tunnels, additional antennas must be installed. This is time-consuming because the tunnels have to be closed to train traffic for safety reasons.
In the coming months, the cooperation will focus on the remaining, particularly demanding sections of the route – locations where, for example, strict requirements for nature or monument protection must be observed, space for radio masts is scarce or steep slopes or embankments make construction difficult. Here, too, Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom want to work together as part of their proven cooperation to develop solutions for seamless mobile coverage for their customers.
