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WE DELIVER A FULLY INTEGRATED SOLUTION INCLUDING TECHNOLOGY, INFRASTRUCTURE, DEPLOYMENT AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT.
The only proven rail solution that delivers >600Mbps (up to 2.5Gbps)
Specifically designed for rail customers by a rail operator
Communications technology with strong environmental credentials, relying on exceptionally low power supply while maintaining ultra-high bandwidth
Delivering cost effective, high speed Wi-Fi for on-board connectivity that’s 10x less expensive than mobile data
Select from a fully managed or licensed solution to suit your needs. The infrastructure, radon’s communications system, trackside and train networks are included in both packages
KEY PEOPLE
Adrian Tarozzi
Sales & Marketing Director
With over 20 years’ experience in a variety of sales leadership roles, Adrian has delivered significant revenue growth for both large global companies and start up/scale up businesses alike. Most of his career has been in the telecoms and mobile arena, building and leading teams responsible for the acquisition of large complex new business opportunities, and the development and successful execution of new market entry and alliance strategies. Before joining evo-rail, Adrian was UK Head of Sales at Deutsche Telekom, where as a founding member of the leadership team he helped to launch Global Business Solutions, an agile business unit created to design, build and operate software-defined networks at scale for major enterprises. Prior to that, he has served in a number of strategic sales, partnership and business development roles at AT&T, O2 and Avaya.
Antonio Muniesa
Senior Sales Manager
Antonio has worked in business development and international sales of rail transport solutions for more than 15 years. He has worked across different geographies, most recently at Indra where he had a multisectoral focus. Previously he worked at IKUSI which allowed him to delve deeper into railways solutions and customers’ needs with a focus on the importance of the application of new technologies. At evo rail, Antonio will focus on our European customers and market.
Daniella Johnson
Chief of Staff
Daniella’s career has focused on providing project support on various programmes in the Insurance, Pharmaceutical and Rail Industry. Joining FirstGroup in September 2019, Daniella has helped build and drive governance within the programme and now focuses on the marketing strategy for evo-rail.
Gareth Palmer
Commercial & Finance Director
Gareth has a background in both Group FP&A and Business Finance Director roles, across a range of global businesses and industries, most recently Business Services in the Marine sector and prior to this Software.He has developed a strong track record of driving revenue growth, optimising business performance and growing shareholder value with significant strategy implementation experience focused on designing and setting strategic objectives across diverse and complex organisations. Proactive in working capital, treasury and tax optimisation, Gareth has both Audit and Corporate Finance experience from a ‘Big 4’ background, with in-depth experience in both M&A and Due Diligence. At evo-rail, Gareth is the Commercial and Finance Director with a key focus in growing the business to reach its potential.
George Hawkins
Programme Manager
George manages our trials programmes in the UK and overseas. He has been leading programmes with major European and Middle East infrastructure providers for 15 years, working across power generation, transport and commercial property.
Isabelle Garcia
Operations Director
Isabelle has worked in global organisations, spending over 25 years in the aviation technology sector before moving to the hospitality industry. She has worked across several European countries and has held numerous roles, from Service Delivery to Service Improvement, Customer Service, IT Change Management, Vendor Management, Continuous Process Improvement and Global Business Services implementation. A Service driven leader, Isabelle has always challenged the status-quo to achieve a better user experience, and to deliver the best results to internal and external partners. At evo-rail, Isabelle will focus her efforts to deliver rail-5G contracts and to implement support services.
Jamshed Rahim
PMO Support
Joe Hamilton
Junior Telecoms Engineer
Karl Liriano
Chief Technology Officer
Karl has spent over 20 years working in area of mobile networks having worked for Vodafone, Huawei and Telefonica over that time. Having started out optimising 2G radio networks Karl has gone on to lead radio planning for 3G networks, delivery of a national 4G network and setting the strategy for 5G deployment and 5G evolution. He has established a strong commercial competence over this time having being heavily involved in the creation of a tower company, delivering network sharing agreements and providing network and technology leadership in the Virgin Media and O2 merger. A results driven technology leader, throughout his career Karl has taken technology and looked to see how it can be pushed to its limits, how it can be deployed faster and better, how it can create more value and deliver a better experience for the customer all of which he continues to do here with evo rail.
Louise Niven
Head of Marketing
Louise has worked in marketing and communications for over 20 years, having spent time at Morgan Stanley, SITA and Elenium Automation. Most recently moving from the aviation technology sector she has gained success in building awareness and engagement in global corporates as well as high growth tech start-ups.
Mahbod Nasro
Site Supervisor
Mab’s enthusiasm for growth is unparalleled. With 10 years on the railway, he has accumulated the knowledge & experience on many sectors of the Infrastructure working for TubeLines, NR, Wessex Capacity, Geoffrey Osborne & Siemens. His portfolio consist of major projects undertaken on both LUL & NR lines. His input on Wessex CP6-7 Maintenance, including emergency land-slip project gained him awards for “Best Performing Site” At Evo-rail, Mabs will be managing the Safety side of the Field Delivery works and overlooking our supplier’s performance on/off track.
Richard Graham
Chief Engineer
Richard has over 20 years’ experience in wireless R&D, primarily in project management, systems engineering and software development roles for 3G and 4G cellular networks. Prior to joining First Group Richard spent three years at Blu Wireless as programme manager for transport, responsible for mmWave mobility trails and demonstrations including the ground breaking DALI project.
Simon Ford
Chief Network Architect
Simon has been working within the Data Communications industry for almost 20 years. He was heavily involved in the early deployment of BT's commercial and residential broadband services, before assisting other national and international service providers in achieving similar goals. Moving focus towards the rail transport industry, he was involved in consultation, implementation and ongoing support of numerous communication projects across some of the UK's largest train operating companies. Simon was externally involved with the rail-5G project for around 18 months, before officially joining FirstGroup in early 2020.
SIMON HOLMES
GROUP HEAD OF DIGITAL (ENGINEERING)
Simon began his career developing military communications systems before moving to BT and transitioning from technology to product development and corporate strategy. Hereafter he joined Comcast to lead Business Services across many cable franchises to subsequently spend nearly a decade in the Big 4 with KPMG before becoming Group Head of Digital (Comms) at FirstGroup. Throughout Simon’s career he has built and transformed businesses, technologies and services, whether organically or through M&A. evo-rail is a wonderful opportunity for all these things.
HISTORY
MANTRA
2016/18
The first incarnation of rail-5G came in 2016 when Prof. Andrew Nix combined beamforming technology with Fixed Wireless Access in the mmWave band to demonstrate transmitting almost a gigabit on to a moving train. This spawned multiple consortiums that ended in FirstGroup leading the Dali trials.
DALI
2018/19
Whilst Mantra was a collection of components and a proof of concept, the Dali trials were to test the first generation radio system developed from Mantra in a fully functioning railway. This taught us that whilst the radio might work, networking the traffic and delivering it in a safe and cost effective way would be a greater challenge. We proved the radio was capable of over a gigabit throughput, but we urgently needed on-train integration and a trackside network, let alone a doubling of the radio’s segments range.
DEGAS
2019/20
The Degas Programme is now nearing its completion and was about integration: on-train and trackside, whilst upgrading to the new second generation radio equipment. Degas is to proceed to the first commercial rollout which will be on one of the world’s busiest railways, South West Railways (SWR). This will start in 2020 following the final stress testing of rail-5G ahead of Network Rail’s Product Acceptance, trackside and train design approvals and compliance with a dizzying array of European health and safety regulations.
MANET
2020 Onwards
Having spent five years creating the rail-5G solution, the next phase in evo-rail’s journey will be delivery and globalisation. Delivering SWR and Avanti West Coast, nearly 300km’s of rail-5G will reach past Birmingham whilst we also embark on our plans for global expansion.
FIRST GROUP
- FirstGroup is a leading transport operator in the UK and North America. With approximately £7.8 billion in revenues and more than 100,000 employees, we transported around 2.1 billion passengers last year across our five divisions.
- The Group functions focus on fostering a high performance culture, developing and managing our talent, establishing and monitoring key objectives and standards across the Group, and providing support and challenge to our divisions.
- 5 years ago, FirstGroup began working with the University of Bristol to research and develop a rail-5G (mmWave) technology to address the lack of mobile coverage of the railways which is how evo rail became a division of FirstGroup.
