Rio de Janeiro activates a 4G-LTE network that would be the envy of the Mexico City Metro

The city subway Rio de Janeiromanaged by the concession company MetroRioconcluded the activation works of a telecommunications network with technology 4G which from now on will ensure the communications of Internet and of mobile telephony of the users who travel along the tracks of this entire urban underground train system.

Rio de Janeirohistoric capital of Brazilis a city dotted with deep and extensive tunnels, bridges, highways and railways due to its intricate orography located between mountain ranges and the Atlantic coast of South America.

The city has, for example, tunnels over three kilometers long that connect the north with the south and the west with the center of the city, hence the existence of huge and irregularly shaped infrastructures such as the 5.6 Rebouças tunnel. kilometers on two tracks or the Túnel Prefeito Marcello Alencar tunnel, 44 meters deep and 3.8 kilometers long. Another sample is the Rio-Niterói bridge, which with an extension crosses 13 kilometers of Guanabara Bay.

The complexity and depth of all this type of infrastructure to unite the Brazilian city from the mountains to the beaches complicate the connectivity of the cellular communications of Rio de Janeiro users of the metro, which according to data from MetroRiomake average trips of 12.5 kilometers daily and sometimes with total times of 95 minutes, counting here the waits of up to 19 minutes to board the trains at peak hours and correspondence stations, time in which users receive intermittent communications on their cell phones .

User demands —Rio de Janeiro had a total population of 6.9 million inhabitants in 2021— due to efficient mobile services they forced the concessionaire of MetroRio and the main telephone operators to unite to build an infrastructure network for 4G-LTE cellular communications arranged in the metro network, through 600 antennas and 30 kilometers of state-of-the-art fiber optic cabling.

The extension of the network MetroRio it was 57 kilometers long in 2021, with 41 stations in operation, between transit stations and terminals that correspond to the three lines currently in operation: 1, 2 and 4, because line 3 is under construction projects.

In this way, the new network 4G-LTE for the metro would cover 53% of all kilometers of rail MetroRiobut the fiber infrastructure was installed with reinforcement in those areas of the metro where cellular communications are down, while the 600 antennas cover the entire system network.

clear of America Movil, Hey, TIM de Telecom Italia y Live from Telefonica escorted to the dealer MetroRioin turn a subsidiary company of the Invepar Group that specializes in logistics and transport companies, in the development of the new network 4G-LTE which is buried underground, but which has the power to serve more than the 900,000 users who use the Rio de Janeiro metro every day.

The union of all those competitors among themselves in Brazil to unfold a red 4G for users from Rio de Janeiro contrasts with the discourse —especially of America Movil y Telefónica in Mexico—than those companies that maintain in other markets in which they reject the deployment and joint sharing of infrastructure to maintain efficient user communications in critical environments such as underground.

An example of this is the Collective Transport System (STC) Metro of Mexico City, in which Telcel of America Movil and AT&T deployed their wired infrastructure networks each on their own, while AT&T also alone offers a free Internet service in the CDMX Metro, just as the city government does the same to serve the 4.5 million users who daily use the 91 stations of the Mexico City Metro, spread over 192 kilometers in active service.

In Rio de Janeiro The union of the cellular communication giants is also seen as an improvement of its own image, since its national and/or regional parent companies of these brands have their headquarters in the city, such as Oi, América Móvil’s Embratel and Telefónica’s Vivo.

Meanwhile, all the platforms, the mezzanines and the tunnels of the subway Rio de Janeiro As of this week, they have a continuous service of Internet and mobile telephony with quality 4G-LTEafter the culmination of a project that lasted two years and in four phases of deployment of antennas and fiber optics.

The recent infrastructure would also be venting the traffic that was generated during peak hours in some of the busiest stations in the system, with up to 15,000 users connected to public telephone systems. Wi-Fi.

“The last stage has already been tested and completed and corresponds to the section of Line 4, from General Osório/Ipanema to Jardim Oceânico/Barra da Tijuca. The first three, in gradual operation since August 2020, cover all the stations and trains of Line 1, from Uruguay/Tijuca to General Osório/Ipanema; and Line 2, from Pavuna to Botafogo/Coca-Cola, including the underground sections of the tunnels located in Maracanã, Del Castilho and Maria da Graça (…) The initiative provides more than 30 kilometers of fiber optic connection via cable, which that guarantees improvements in the quality of the signal in a closed environment and the expansion of 4G-LTE coverage for cell phones throughout the underground system”, he said MetroRio.

“Improving our customers’ experience is an ongoing process. Having the entire system connected, thanks to the association with the telephone operators, is a big step: an important comfort that we offer our clients”, added the concessionaire company.

The data traffic generated by users with the improvement of the service within the Rio de Janeiro metro will be added to that generated by the 230,000 people who already used the free Internet service for Wi-Fi that already offered MetroRio from 2019 to travelers.

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