POCSTARS, a world leading Push-to-talk over Cellular (PoC) solution provider, recently completed the deployment of a push-to-talk (PTT) communications and dispatching system for Shijiazhuang Railway Bureau of Hebei Province, China. The system, well accepted by the bureau, has been running smoothly and facilitating railway staff’s safe and efficient work.

Shijiazhuang Railway Bureau used to have some issues in their Land Mobile Radio (LMR) services. First, Shijiazhuang City has a wide and complex railway network and its LMR system was becoming increasingly incapable of offering reliable coverage along the tracks. Second, the Bureau’s traditional LMR devices were limited in features; it’s hard to integrate the LMR system with other up-to-date IT systems, while there were a lot of requests for more data services and wider coverage. Third, there was no unified dispatching capability across different teams and departments, such as engineers, electricians, operators, other maintenance staff; therefore, teams communicated within their own silos, and it was difficult to accomplish efficient collaborations across departments.

POCSTARS designed the private communication and dispatching system over the top of cellular carriers’ networks in order to ensure LMR graded push-to-talk and group calls, as well as more versatile data features.

1. Based on the public network and mobile internet, the new system provides railway workers with wide PTT coverage regardless of distance limit.

2. It provides features such as organization-level scheduling, multi-group, geo-group, etc., and it delivers one-to-one private call, one-to-many group call, group scheduling, and unified command for the staff equipped with handheld terminals., It improves the efficiency of comprehensive scheduling and dispatching.

3. The integrated GIS services makes it easy for the railway workers to track and replay trails. The staff can be dispatched in real time without delay and given emergency instructions through the dispatching system. Such features play important roles in maintaining safe and stable operations of railway.

4. The system supports versatile features such as data trace, multimedia messages, real-time video, and geo-fence, which make it intuitive to fulfil video call, conference call, cross-border alert, etc.