OPTIMISING SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR RAILWAY TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES

This paper describes the supply and demand aspects of the telecommunications services of The Netherlands Railways and other European railways. The following stages are required to determine a railway company's future demand for telecommunications services: 1) analysis of the company's information needs, in train operation, passenger sales, passenger information, freight traffic, etc; (2) specification of expected types and applications of information technology that will meet these needs; (3) estimation of the necessary numbers and types of these services. The Netherlands Railways Company is building a new digital telecommunications service network to meet anticipated demand. A very important question to be considered is whether the network should be restricted to internal use only. Economic, technical, organisational, and legal implications are addressed. There are comparable demand and supply developments in many other European railway companies. It is important to avoid multiple independent development of similar applications of information technology; therefore, standardisation needs to be stimulated, similar analyses of supply and demand should be done for all Europe's railways, and the resulting knowledge should be exchanged. The supply of telecommunications services is entirely concentrated on the HERMES (European Railways' Message Exchange System) network, comprising the physical network, the method of transporting data, and joint applications.