Comsol keeps Gautrain online

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 31 Jan 2008

Eskom's power outages may be severely affecting construction of the Gautrain track along its 80km route between Johannesburg, Pretoria and OR Tambo International Airport. However, it is not affecting site-to-site data and voice communications, says Communication Solutions (Comsol) director Darren Morgan.

Morgan says Comsol, subcontracting for T-Systems, last year installed a site-to-site wireless network linking 25 Gautrain construction sites to each other and the Bombela Consortium's Marlboro head office. Morgan says the network has been running for the last six months and has not been affected by Eskom power cuts as it is backed by uninterruptible power supply and generators. "We are not affected by the power cuts," he says.

Gautrain spokesperson Barbara Jensen last week said Eskom was hampering construction. The project's 43 sites are powered from 19 different substations.

"As Gautrain spans over a vast geographical area, different construction sites will be without electricity at different times, depending on the load-shedding schedule. Construction sites are... not completely reliant on electricity," she says.

"Where tunnelling takes place, emergency power supply systems are always fully operational. Therefore, some form of construction will always be functional whenever there is a power outage.

"However, an area of special concern is Rosebank. Imbokodo, Gautrain's tunnel boring machine, operates on electricity and a constant supply... is needed to operate this machine 24 hours a day. Ongoing load-shedding in this area will directly affect Imbokodo's operations," Jensen says.

The Eskom-proof 8Mb duplex wireless net cost about R2.5 million to install and will cost roughly the same to run over the duration of the project, expected to wrap up in 2012. Morgan says the sites are semi-fixed, and on average are expected to move every two to six months.

The Gautrain project is still mostly in the civil engineering stage, with track construction still to start. Other than an e-ticketing solution, most of the project's IT subcontracts must still be awarded and Comsol is keen to bid for more wireless work.

In the meantime, the company has been active in rolling out wireless networks for the SA National Defence Force and in various metros around the country - most notably the Nelson Mandela municipality located around Port Elizabeth.