Toyota aims to develop data communication modules for its in-vehicle connectivity by 2019
Japanese telco KDDI signed a partnership with Toyota Motor to establish a global communication platform to enable the operation of communication networks to support connected cars. Toyota announced plans to develop globally uniform data communication modules for its in-vehicle connectivity by 2019.
The Japanese carmaker said the communication modules will be standard equipment in nearly all new Toyota and Lexus vehicles sold in Japan and the U.S. by 2020, and will gradually be installed in a range of new vehicles in other major markets over time. Under the terms of this new partnership, KDDI and Toyota will jointly plan and design a global communication platform which will be developed and operated by KDDI. The platform is also said to allow Toyota to enhance its product-related research and development and the quality of its services by using vehicle data collected via DCMs.
The platform is said to allow for vehicles to automatically connect with telecom operators in different countries without relying on global roaming services. Toyota and KDDI said they will jointly choose and procure communication networks in each country to incorporate into the platform.
KDDI ended the first quarter of 2016 with nearly 46 million mobile subscribers.
China Mobile starts NFV commercialization trial
In other APAC news, Chinese vendor ZTE announced work with China Mobile for the commercialization of rich communication services. ZTE said it worked with China Mobile to build the virtual IP multimedia subsystem-based RCS project.
ZTE won the system integrator contract in October 2014, which called for ZTE to provide the IMS-based RCS solution supporting multimedia messaging, network voice calling, video calling and address book capabilities.
ZTE said it currently has 12 commercial contracts and 32 proof of concepts tied to its network functions virtualization core platform.