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Rumo, the largest railway operator in Brazil, has awarded Globalsat Group, the first Pan-American satellite telecommunications services company, the Innovation award at their annual provider awards ceremony tonight. The tribute acknowledges Globalsat Group’s strategic importance as a partner, highlighting the company’s work to evolve to meet the growing and sophisticated communications in Rumo movement.
Offering logistics services for rail transport, port lifting and storage, Rumo operates 12 transhipment terminals, six port terminals and manages approximately 14,000 kilometres of railways. These extensive railways cover the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Goiás and Tocantins. Its asset base consists of more than a thousand locomotives and 28,000 wagons.
We are delighted and proud of this distinction that significantly reduce costs throughout the rail network, with an estimated saving of millions per month as a result of optimizing the operation.”— Igor Falcao, Globalsat Group’s SVP of Sales and head of Globalsat Brasil.
Rumo established the provider awards program to recognize suppliers that demonstrate excellence in material and service supply. The awards also encourage and value innovative, sustainable projects and process improvement projects that add value to the business and its stakeholders.
Within the program, there are two types of awards: the Performance Award and the Outstanding Innovation and Sustainability Award.
Globalsat do Brasil has been distinguished with the Outstanding Innovation Award for the development and execution of its connectivity project. The project enables accurate real-time tracking of each train and reliable voice and data communication between drivers, maintenance teams and the Control Center, producing immediate results.
Prior to implementing the solution, messages between drivers and control centers took an average of ten minutes to deliver. The speed and reliability of communications provided by the new satellite solution has given Rumo greater visibility of its assets and infrastructure, resulting in significant improvements in operational efficiency.
The railway system is essential in Brazil for the transport of agricultural, industrial and container cargo to serve the export, import and domestic markets. Rumo is responsible for connecting the largest production centers to the main ports of the country. It transports millions of tons through the main rail corridor for Brazilian agribusiness, which connects the state of Mato Grosso with the Port of Santos, the largest port complex in Latin America.
As most of its railways pass through remote regions of Brazil, one of the main challenges that Rumo has faced for several years is efficient network coverage. Connectivity difficulties in some locations prevented drivers, rail engineers and control centers from communicating in real time, meaning that messages sent could take more than ten minutes to deliver. As the trains could not continue their journey until updates were received from the control centers, operations were subject to unnecessary delays and fuel costs.
In response to these challenges, Globalsat do Brasil, joined forces with Inmarsat, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications and leading global technology and services innovator, Cobham to offer a customized communication and telemetry solution for railway networks.
The solution enables accurate real-time tracking of each train in the Rumo network, as well as reliable voice and data communication between drivers, maintenance teams and the Operations Control Center (CCO).
The project started by equipping 300 Rumo locomotives with EXPLORER 325 (BGAN) terminals, EXPLORER Mobile Gateways and Cobham's PRISM PTT+ service to provide seamless and efficient connectivity by selecting the best available network (cellular/satellite/LAN) for communications. This enables voice and data without user intervention. It also enables interoperability between the DMR, LMR and MCPTT systems, ensuring that the solution is fully compatible with existing technology on board the locomotives.
Satellite connectivity is provided by Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service, which operates over Inmarsat's global L-band network. Many governments, militaries, and businesses around the world rely on BGAN to stay connected when all else fails with a 99.9% reliability level.
Globalsat do Brasil provides Rumo with project development, implementation, ongoing warranty, on-site support and repairs, to ensure the optimum performance of the connectivity solution.
The solution ensures that Rumo has access to uninterrupted, high-quality connectivity to facilitate the transfer of telematics, voice and video data, enabling accurate real-time tracking of each train and communication between drivers, maintenance and regional control centers.
The data from the locomotives is displayed in an application in the CCO, which represents the entire rail network and the position of each vehicle, as well as its speed. The intention of the structure is to provide Rumo's fleet with highly reliable connectivity, ensuring an efficient, profitable and safe rail network.
Igor Falcao, Director of Globalsat do Brasil and Senior Vice President of Sales for Latin America of Globalsat Group, said: “We are delighted and proud of this distinction. Globalsat do Brasil's expectation with the project is to significantly reduce costs throughout the rail network, with an estimated saving of millions per month as a result of optimizing the operation and taking care to avoid unnecessary braking and acceleration. Additional savings are also likely because Rumo hopes to transport more freight in less time without having to invest in new locomotives and railcars.”
Mike Carter, President of Inmarsat Enterprise said, “We’re incredibly proud of the tailored communication and telemetry solution we have created for Rumo's rail networks in partnership with Globalsat Group and Cobham SATCOM. Our joint solution had an immediate and significant impact on Brazil's railway system, enabling more efficient transport of agricultural, industrial and container cargo, effecting domestic, export and import markets. Globalsat is a key partner for Inmarsat in Latin America, bringing its technical deployment and management knowhow on the ground, to complement our global, reliable satellite network.”
Distributed annually, the Rumo award to its Suppliers recognizes the best practices of its suppliers of materials and services, promoting the continuous improvement of its processes, not only to meet the requirements of contracting services or supply of materials, but also to promote full alignment with Rumo's mission.
