Last week I attended the joint shows of LTE World Summit and Connected Cars 2014 and there was a lot to talk about. Hopefully you’ve seen our coverage, but just to highlight a few topics we mentioned in more detail and a few new ones.
Hot topics of the shows
LTE Roaming: everyone was talking about LTE roaming and whether or not this problem is handled or larger then expected. There are a lot of vendors out there saying it’s solved and although it may be from a technical point of view, the real challenge is the roaming agreements. So if you live in the U.S., you’re in good shape as there’s really only four operators to worry about. But, if you’re in Europe, the Middle East or Africa where there’s north of 40 operators or you’re a heavy traveler, don’t expect LTE outside of your home territory anytime in the near future.
CEM becomes CEM: For the past few years CEM has stood for customer experience management. It now seems to be migrating to a larger discussion that actually monitors this experience and takes appropriate action to resolve any issues with the customer experience. I think the “M” now takes on two meanings: monitoring and management.
Selling Mobility without the car – BMW gave a keynote address on the first day of the Connected Cars show and talked about the vision for selling mobility without the car. Kudos to BMW for getting this right. As the industry really embraces connected cars there needs to be recognition of the end user experience and mindset in these solutions. The product offers and marketing needs to move beyond these features being just like a sunroof or fancy wheels at the point of sale.
Who will own infotainment in the car?: The correct answer is everyone. Some players talk about the car controlling everything; some talk about the smartphone being in control; some players are talking about working with application stores – think Apple and Google’s recent connected car announcements; while some car makers are launching their own app stores. I wonder about this last development given the failure of some telecom operators that went down this path. But, the time is now for everyone to jump into this arena and sort out what will work best for the end user.
Interesting thoughts
LTE for connected cars: Following the keynote on day one of the Connected Cars event there was a telecom panel of operators discussing the topic. At the end of the session a question was asked as to whether or not LTE was actually required to support all of the options. The answer was surprising, no. Very few applications actually require the additional bandwidth being discussed in this space. The bigger challenge to the operators seems to be about the business model for success.
Connected vessels: Ericsson is working on a project related to connected vessels which I found quite interesting. At the basic level it is the ability to track your container as it moves across the ocean. But the vision is that you can actually visually check the contents, check the temperature, adjust the temperature, etc.
Video usage offers: Is it time to think about calling out video usage separately in the data offers of the operators? Another topic who’s time seems to have arrived. Like the days when customers originally tried to figure out their data usage, and then their smartphone data usage and had some very unpleasant surprises, video now has the same challenges. Who knows how to tell how much data they’ve used when they watch a video? Anyone? Likely not unless you’re in this industry. So, what about billing based on the time you watched video. Seems like a good idea to me.
SON moving up the value chain: I had a couple of discussions with vendors such as Cellwize and Amdocs about the utilization of self-optimizing networks to provide customer experiences based on identity of the customer (VIPs) and the location of the customer (events), to name two examples. It’s great to see vendors take a historically technical topic and move it into a discussion about the impact on the end-user experience and how operators can drive new business models based on a technology.
Traffic shifting: One topic of concern heard across multiple vendors is being able to shift spectrum based on network traffic requirements. It seems to be an open challenge as operators contend with users on their network simultaneously using 2G, 3G and 4G infrastructure. Let’s not forget companies and conferences are already focusing on 5G!
Just for fun
Is Bentley missing the boat? There was discussion during the Bentley session as to whether or not the Bentley driver cared about connected car applications because of their age? Well, I’m not sure it shows a good grasp of demographics to say older people don’t care about technology for one. And second, I live in Germany and see plenty of younger people driving Bentleys. So I wonder about the vision or lack of one here.
The weirdest thing I heard about were ethical hackers in the automotive space. I spoke with a company called NCC Group about their automotive cyber security solution. It turns out they are ethical hackers that work with car makers to ensure their in-car networks and computers are safe from hacking before they launch. Interesting niche that I likely wouldn’t have thought of earlier. But, I can’t help but think there’s a movie in here somewhere. Terrorists hack into all of the networks of the self-driving cars and create four-wheeled assassins to take over Los Angeles. Should I start writing the screenplay?
And The coolest things on the floor was Telenor Connexion’s partnership with Koenigsegg on the One:1. This brings a whole new meaning to “connected car.” For those of you who don’t know about this car, it was launched this year for a list price of $2.8 million and only six were produced. They even used 3D printing on parts of the car. As a side note, if you’re into technology it’s worth a read about this vehicle. But, the most amazing thing is the suspension and wind resistance are controlled by an iPhone app – how cool is that! Watch the iPhone app do its thing.