Kolkata: Four telecom majors Tata Teleservices (TTSL), Reliance Communications (RCOM), Bharti Airtel and BSNL are vying to build a special mobile network, GSM-R, for the railways'' own requirement covering 63,000 km of tracks for two lakh employees.

RailTel Corporation (RailTel), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Indian Railways, has decided to implement two projects. The first involves building the GSM-R network while the second involves creating a closed user group (CUG) for two lakh-strong railway staff. RailTel is yet to invite EoIs for the CUG project.

Railway officials said GSM-R will be a dedicated network for the railways with special features. This will be an additional telecom-network layer over the existing ones offered by these operators.