This week Alcatel-Lucent brought its ng Connect "LTE Connected Car" to Europe to demo to press, analysts and partners. It's a concept car for automotive communications, designed to drive home the apps breakthrough promised by LTE which will bring ultra-broadband speeds and, most important says Alcatel-Lucent, low latency. By Ian Scales.
In effect the ng Connect demo car becomes what Derek Kuhn, VP, emerging technology and media corporate solutions at Alcatel Lucent, calls an iPhone on wheels with an app for everything and from every seating position - except the driving position of course (see - NewsDesk: High-speed auto - Alcatel-Lucent lays out its LTE vision on wheels, below). The driver gets to play about with a video dashboard illustrating various car functions and can access driver-specific apps like the turn-by-turn navigation system - games and entertainment, however, are a no-no for the driver for obvious reasons.
So not only can high definition media be piped into the car via LTE, but the system's fast response means multi-user games and er.. multi-user games can be accessed by the passengers when they couldn't before under plain old 3G.
So this is LTE as a use case for the automobile industry, and the auto industry as a use case for LTE-wielding telcos. As Kuhn says, the objective is to start a dialogue which could end in major relationships between players in delivering the technology and services. Part of that conversation will be around business models and Kuhn doesn't rule out the possibility of what we might call 'Kindle-style' services, where the LTE service is bought for the lifetime of the car out of the initial purchase price (and maybe a cut of various revenues from services - should there be any).
The demonstration car is set up with LTE - we viewed it connected to Alcatel-Lucent's demo LTE site at Vélizy to the South West of Paris - and it is indeed an iPhone-users idea of what the ultimate connected car could be like. Just imagine every app and service you can... then imagine them on a dashboard.
An important element with the Connected Car is the QNX operating system which, it's claimed, is a traditional real-time operating system to give the required reliability. In addition to running crucial car management things, QNX is also able to support mobile operating system apps such as those developed for Android and iPhone, so these familiars can be downloaded and used.
» This story continues on page 2. Please click here to read
please sign in to rate this article
45919
NewsDesk: High-speed auto: Alcatel-Lucent lays out its LTE vision on wheels