Huawei Solutions to Ensure Safety, Sustainability, Digitization of Morocco’s Rail Industry

Rabat – Chinese technology giant Huawei is contributing to the digitization of the railway industry in Morocco by providing a range of technological solutions such as LTE-based Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS), perimeter protection, all-optical network, which will empower digitization of the railway industry.

Huawei showcased some of its latest solutions for high-speed railroads at the 11th International Union of Railways (UIC) High-Speed Congress. The congress brought together senior industry executives and railway experts in Marrakech’s Palais des Congrès from March 7-10.

“The Congress is a significant opportunity for Huawei to highlight the solutions we offer to the global rail industry,” Li Junfeng, CEO of Huawei’s Aviation and Rail Division, said. “Our R&D teams take into account the specific needs of the industry, and we leverage our extensive experience in digitalization to bring the best of our digital technologies to rail customers.”

In an interview with Morocco World News (MWN), Colin Hu, President of Huawei Northern Africa Enterprise & Cloud Business Group, highlighted the Chinese company’s mission to help propel Morocco’s railway industry into the future. “Our mission and vision is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected intelligent transport such as Railway,” he argued.

Colin Hu, President of Huawei Northern Africa Enterprise & Cloud Business Group

Huawei has been working for the last twenty years on the development of high speed railways providing innovative solutions and products covering leading ICT infrastructure, green energy solutions, as well as smart railway applications, Hu explained.

He added that the tech giant’s OTN— Optical Transport Network— solutions guarantee the security of mission critical services and also the evolution of data bandwidth.

Sustainable development of the railway industry

The event’s slogan is “High-speed rail: the right speed for our planet.” According to organizers, Huawei has been taking the environmental protection and sustainable development factors into consideration when designing smart railway solution portfolios.

Colin Hu highlighted that LTE-based FRMCS provides high-bandwidth and low-latency networks that can support more new services in the future.

“When FRMCS is mature enough to be used in the railway industry, base stations can be upgraded only by upgrading the software, reducing the environmental pollution and energy consumption,” Hu explained.

FRMCS is the successor of the traditional train-to-ground wireless communications solution (GSM-R), which is reaching the end of its lifecycle and cannot ensure stable and reliable connections.

According to Huawei, LTE-based FRMCS provides “secure and reliable basic networks for railways, enriching industry applications, and facilitating their digital transformation.”

Improving rail industry security

With UIC’s 2022 security report having found that there are 83.1% accidents caused by train collisions with an obstacle or individual, Huawei’s perimeter detection solution aims to make the railway industry safer.

The tech solution, which was presented for the first time during the ongoing Marrakech congress, can be developed in key locations along the trackside and level crossings.

Driving this digital transformation are new ICT technologies such as cloud, big data, IoT, as well as AI. The constant evolution of digital technologies is impacting the increasing digitization of high-speed railroads around the world.

“The digitalization in the railway industry is inevitable and the whole ecosystem is uniting to provide solutions to match the requirements of digitalization,” Hu said.

Huawei aims to develop technological solutions that ensure the safety, sustainability and digitization of modern rail systems, he argued, noting: “We have developed a smart railway solution portfolio and defined the full-service architecture to address the trends of rail digitalization.”

The regional top manager of Huawei spoke emphatically of the company’s sense of mission and duty, arguing that Huawei is “committed” to its “duty” of boosting digital transformation in Morocco and Africa. “Last year we celebrated our 20-year anniversary in Morocco, so we say, in Morocco, for Morocco, in Africa, for Africa,” Hu explained.

He mentioned that the Chinese tech giant is collaborating with universities in Morocco and the country’s ministry of education to train students, concluding: “this is our commitment to the country and industry.”