Mobile connectivity comes to the Gautrain stations

It looks like losing cellphone signal when you travel to the underground Gautrain stations is going to be a thing of the past.

Commuters that use the Gautrain will now be able to make use of their mobile phones and other devices to make phone calls and connect to the internet at the Sandton, Park and Rosebank stations.

This all happened on Wednesday this week when the mobile network, Vodacom, announced that its coverage will now extend to the underground stations. The Strategic Partners Group (SPG), Department of Roads and Transport, the Gautrain Management Agency and Bombela Concession Company, who are all in partnership with Vodacom, also said that they have completed their work on the creation of a technological environment that enables the mobile communications.

The Strategic Partners Group said, “Making these facilities available represents the first phase of a much broader engineering project which will see the installation of additional technical infrastructure that will extend across the entire Gautrain reserve.”

People who use the Gautrain will no longer be frustrated when they go into the underground stations and cannot connect, especially when they have a lot of free time to kill while they wait for the train!

However, the cellphone signal does not go into the actual tunnels in the Gautrain system, YET. Vodacom has said that they plan to roll out tunnel coverage in the second phase of the project, which will work on ensuring that commuters have a seamless service throughout the Gautrain route. That means your phone calls will never be dropped once you travel into the tunnels.

Each of the systems, which are antenna systems located throughout the three stations, is connected via fibre-optic cable to network equipment located in Rosebank. 2G, 3G and LTE (4G) services will all be enabled with this solution.

So, it seems like all Gautrain commuters, wherever they find themselves on the system, will be able to seamlessly connect to the outside world.

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