BEIJING – Canada’s Nortel Networks Corp has been selected by China to provide a digital wireless network for a railway that will eventually form a link to remote and mountainous Tibet, the company said.
Nortel will provide voice and data communications for both conventional and high-speed trains to run along the 1,142-kilometer (710-mile) railway, according to a statement issued by the company.
“This new wireless network represents the most up-to-date communications technology available to the railway industry worldwide,” said Hu Shukai, deputy chief of China’s Qinghai-Tibet Railway Construction Administration Office.
Track laying for the railway, linking northwestern Qinghai province with the Tibetan capital of Lhasa through some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain, will be completed by the end of this year.
The world’s highest railway will begin trial operation in July next year, according to government plans published by state media recently.
The project has been criticized by rights advocates as part of an effort to encourage Han Chinese migrants to settle in Tibet, which China brought under its control with an invasion in 1951.
