Nortel wins rail network contract

France’s national railway operator Société National des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF) and railway infrastructure manager Réseau Ferré de France (RFF) have awarded a 15-year, USD200 million contract to Canada’s Nortel Networks for the provision of a turnkey GSM network covering 15,000km of railway lines. Nortel will begin rolling out the network in mid-2004.