On Monday 13 January 2025, Luxembourg's national railway company, the CFL, and the Restena Foundation announced their collaboration aimed at providing secure WiFi access to the research and education community in Luxembourg.
The CFL already offers a free internet connection (CFL Free WiFi) in all 68 stations and railway stops in the country as well as in 64 of their 81 buses. From 2025, the free internet connection "eduroam" will also be gradually activated for the benefit of research and education stakeholders.
Based on the "CFL Free WiFi" infrastructure set up by the CFL Infrastructure Manager, a new collaboration has been established between the CFL and Restena. The partners noted that Restena notably ensures the coordination of eduroam in Luxembourg, a service delivered on a global scale, helping to interconnect and provide "essential" network and security services to Luxembourg organisations active in research and education, as well as health, culture and administration. In this capacity, Restena offers its user community "a secure and automatic" WiFi connection available in Luxembourg and 100+ other countries.
The stated objective of the CFL and the Restena Foundation is to gradually make the eduroam network service accessible via WiFi terminals distributed in CFL train stations, stops and buses.
Secondary school students and teachers, students, university students and professors, and research institute staff, as well as those from foreign countries who occasionally visit Luxembourg, will be automatically connected to eduroam once they go to a station where the eduroam signal is broadcast.
"This collaboration enhances our WiFi infrastructure and opens up a new high value-added outlet for it," said Marc Hoffmann, Director of Infrastructure Management at CFL.
"Connectivity services contribute greatly to the travel comfort and connectivity of the educational and research community in Luxembourg, which is one of our regular train customers!" added Marc Wengler, Managing Director of CFL.
For the CFL, railway stations and stops, trains and buses are "places of mobility where their customers particularly appreciate having free and secure connection facilities to consult information relating to their journey, their informative content or to learn and work comfortably during their journey".
"The attractiveness of the public transport offer is closely linked to the services available in the different means of transport," commented Yuriko Backes, Luxembourg's Minister for Mobility and Public Works. "This new offer therefore represents a further step in promoting modal shift by playing on the synergy effects at the level of the mobility and education ecosystems of Luxembourg".
"As soon as the collaboration is launched, the more than 60,000 people benefiting from eduroam Luxembourg through the 50 participating Luxembourg institutions will automatically connect with their devices to these access points at the station. No action will be required, the technical infrastructure that we coordinate with our European colleagues will be fully accessible to them," explained Gilles Massen, Director of the Restena Foundation. For Restena, this collaboration allows it "to intensify the security and protection of the research and education community on Luxembourg soil, which already benefits from the connection in the participating institutions as well as on the HotCity WiFi network of the City of Luxembourg and Esch-sur-Alzette and at Luxembourg Airport".
"The extensive presence of eduroam on national soil makes the use of public transport even more attractive also for stakeholders in public research and higher education and underlines the importance that the government attaches to fast and efficient connectivity in the spirit of a modern and innovative knowledge society, resolutely turned towards the future," stated Stéphanie Obertin, Luxembourg's Minister for Research and Higher Education.
The CFL recalled that a new agreement on improving connectivity on the rail network was signed on Wednesday 6 November 2024 between the CFL, the State and mobile network operators (Luxembourg Online, Orange Luxembourg, POST Luxembourg and Proximus Luxembourg). This agreement concerns the construction of new pylons positioned and equipped to cover the different lines of the rail network and offer connectivity in the surrounding area in order to improve connectivity from one end of the train journey to the other for CFL customers.
