Huawei together with China Railway Signal & Communication (CRSC) and China Telecom have built a dedicated rail communications network for Indonesia’s Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway. The network provides real-time communications, control, train dispatch, and supports intelligent train operations.

The Jakarta-Bandung railway entered service in October this year. The railway, known as ‘the WHOOSH’, reduces travel time between Jakarta and Bandung from 3.5 hours to just 40 minutes and will help boost economic development along the route.

The first high-speed railway in Southeast Asia, the WHOOSH spans 142.3 kilometres between the capital city of Jakarta and the popular tourist destination of Bandung in Indonesia. The maximum operating speed of the trains is 350 kilometres per hour. The WHOOSH is also the first project that applies China’s high-speed railway system, including all elements of the industry value chain, outside China. The WHOOSH marks Indonesia’s entry into the high-speed railway era.

The WHOOSH is equipped with the Chinese Train Control System Level 3 (CTCS-3), which was independently developed in China. Due to the high speed at which the trains travel and their short departure intervals, a stable and reliable dedicated communications network that provides high security, large bandwidth, and simple O&M is crucial for the train control system.

According to Lai Chaosen, Vice President of Huawei Indonesia, the WHOOSH’s train-to-ground wireless network employs interleaving in networking for seamless coverage. By achieving up to 99.99% availability, the network ensures the stable transmission of train control signals and intelligent orchestration and scheduling of train numbers and function numbers.

The data network uses Huawei data communications equipment, which provides secure networks through native hard pipes. Every link is protected by redundancy, and redundancy switchover can be completed within 35 ms.

The transmission network uses Huawei’s Hybrid MSTP equipment, providing bandwidth and stability for over 20 high-speed train systems, such as scheduling and command, disaster prevention, video surveillance, passenger ticketing, and power telecontrol systems. The network is also capable of addressing the growth and evolution requirements of future railway services.

Liu Jieping, CRSC’s Deputy Chief Engineer of the Jakarta–Bandung Project, said that the launch of the WHOOSH represents a major landmark in China’s going global strategy for high-speed railways. The train-to-ground wireless network, transmission network, data network, and other system solutions provided by Huawei have built a dedicated communications network for the WHOOSH and provided technical support for train operations.

Dwiyana Slamet Riyadi, President Director of PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), stated, “We would like to thank all stakeholders, especially Huawei and CRSC, for their contributions in preparing technology solutions and railway infrastructure that are instrumental in supporting the operation of the Whoosh high-speed train. The shared implementation of proven technology solutions and operational solutions of the Whoosh high-speed train can serve as a reference and benchmark for the development of other high-speed rail infrastructure in Indonesia and similar projects in other ASEAN countries.”