We will have to wait until 2025 to connect to 5G in the metro. And not in the center of Paris, but on the southern part of the future line 15 of the Grand Paris Express which will connect the Pont de Sèvres to Noisy-Champs. It was the very young subsidiary of Orange Totem that won the tender to provide the mobile network until 2035. Its mission will be to provide the service in a neutral way to all mobile operators who wish it.
This TowerCo was initially intended to rent pylons and sites to support the infrastructures of mobile operators. As part of line 15, it will design, deploy and ensure the maintenance of active infrastructures in a confined and extremely constrained space.
No question of waiting for line 15 to be completed before intervening. Work will begin next year to begin trial testing the service before opening to the public at the end of 2025. As everything is designed from the outset to integrate the mobile network, the site will be less complex than it was to cover the old lines in 4G. No problem to evacuate the heat generated by data transmissions, for example. The technical challenges lie elsewhere.
The promise of a continuous 5G experience
“We will have to ensure a continuous 5G experience for around 1,000 passengers per train traveling at a speed of 60 km/h. We will be closer to an RER A than a Parisian metro”specifies Nicolas Roy, the boss of Totem Group.
The route extends over 33 kilometers and has 16 stations. “There is nothing aerial and the line is quite deep. In Villejuif, a shaft 60 meters deep and 50 meters in diameter was dug for the station. It is therefore necessary to determine the best places to install the equipment », observes Thierry Papin, CEO of Totem France. Not to mention that it will be necessary to avoid interfering with other communication systems directly linked to the metro.
The Distributed Antenna System (DAS) will include 1000 devices. Large boxes integrating both the antenna and the radio amplifier. In the tunnels, it will be necessary to install two every 400 meters.
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A 10 million euro project
Mobile operators will lease the network from Totem, but will be able to distinguish themselves in terms of quality of service by the amount of spectrum they allocate to it. They will connect their radio bays to the connection points in the technical rooms.
For Totem, it is a project of around 10 million euros. What to make a nice business card to apply for coverage or upgrading of other lines in the rail sector. And why not also stadiums elsewhere in France and Europe, as suggested by the leaders of Totem.