The Nordic public transport sector meets at Stockholmsmässan in Älvsjö this October, and this year’s programme says a lot about where it stands: procurement, digitalisation, AI, and autonomous vehicles.
What we will be talking about is the layer underneath all of it. A vehicle carries onboard systems such as ticketing, real-time information, passenger counting, cameras and driver support, each from a different supplier, alongside a constant stream of signals on the vehicle’s FMS/CAN bus.
Every one of those systems needs the same things to work: an onboard network, a mobile data link, position, time, vehicle data and a way to exchange information with the other systems. In many fleets, that was never designed as a whole; it grew one procurement at a time. The result is familiar: a flat network where one compromised unit reaches everything, a new box for every new function, manual configuration at every replacement, systems that sit side by side for years without exchanging a single signal, and no quick way to tell where a fault is or whose it is. All of it comes down to the layer between the systems.
“That layer is what we build, and it decides more than people expect,” says Mats Johansson, CEO of Pilotfish. “Whether adding a system is a connection or a project. Whether one supplier can be replaced without disturbing the rest. Whether buses, trams and several vehicle generations can be run as one operation instead of three. And whether the vehicle data you already produce is usable by anyone other than the system that happened to collect it.”
Security depends on the same underlying layer, and this year that comes with dates attached. Reporting obligations under the EU Cyber Resilience Act started on 11 September, the full requirements apply from December 2027, and Sweden’s cybersecurity act has applied to operators and authorities since 15 January. Our position is that the risk should be contained rather than the functionality, and that this should be done, to the greatest extent possible, without replacing the equipment already in the vehicles.
At the stand, we will walk you through what that layer looks like.
The Pilotfish Vehicle Communication Platform spans the vehicle gateway onboard and the back office. It provides the shared services every onboard system needs: one controlled mobile data link and onboard network, position, time, vehicle data, and an information broker for exchanging data between systems. Any system from any supplier can use those services, ITxPT-labelled or not.
The new VG300, our next-generation vehicle gateway, carries the platform onboard. It separates the onboard network into zones, anchors security in hardware and runs dual 4G/5G modems active/active. It also hosts your own and third-party software in containers, without adding hardware.
Onboard Insight is our monitoring service for the whole onboard environment, regardless of supplier. It also covers the two services everything else depends on: the quality of the mobile data link and the position.
Come by and talk it through with us, whether you are looking at this from operations, from IT and security, or from the procurement side. It is also Mats Johansson’s first Persontrafik as CEO at Pilotfish, having taken over on 1 September, and he is there all three days.
Coming to Persontrafik? Book a time with us in advance. Slots are limited.
