Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:04):
Joining me now is Suman Sehra, who is global VP of the Connectivity Portfolio Management at Harman. Suman. Thanks very much for speaking with us here at the 5GAA event. I'd like to ask you first of all about harman, its role with the automotive sector and the mobility sector. Tell me how it fits with the 5GAA's aims and objectives.

Suman Sehra, Harman International (00:29):
Thank you for having me here. HARMAN is a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung and being part of Samsung, it infuses a consumer experience's DNA in everything and anything we do. So HARMAN is one of the leading technology supplier for the automakers and we deliver consumer experiences that are geared towards cutting edge technologies that we deliver in partnerships with Samsung and other key industry players to bring a level of connected mobility experiences that elevate the level of use cases and the experiences and expectations that consumers have, the modern day consumers have from vehicles and connectivity is front and center. That is sort of the framework on which the transformation that is seen. And as you can see around you, the transformation that industry is going through is really being made possible on this ubiquitous connectivity. So HARMAN has been part of 5G from very early days, we believe for us in our vision.

(01:39):
And vision is very much aligned with what 5GAA stands for. And 5GAA brings the industry experts around the topic of connected mobility, V2X safety and our goals and mission on making humanity in motion and enabling safe, smart and sustainable mobility for all is sort of amplified and we believe our subject matter expertise, our contributions, I'm on the board, we have couple of working group chairs. We contribute through various policy, standard regulatory topics that advance the industry forward and those are the contributions and those are the reasons why we and the rest of the members are joining this coalition to transform the industry.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:29):
So where would you say we are today, because we're kind of five years, six years into the 5G generation of connectivity. What are you seeing today and what does this actually mean for the automotive and the mobility sector? How does this impact the OEMs?

Suman Sehra, Harman International (02:52):
I think great question. This is something we all reflect on as we are thinking about. So Harman, if I could speak little bit about Harman and our view on it. Harman is going through its own transformation, right? We are looking at how do we deliver products. We have been a high tech company, but we're really now focusing on where do we lead the industry by bringing connectivity at the forefront and what are some of those use cases and applications, whether you're talking about safety, whether you're talking about last mile connectivity, whether you're talking about entertainment, your cars are becoming almost like a third living space when you are at home, when you are in your office, there is a level of expectation that you have from your infrastructure so you can carry on with your digital life. When I think about where 5G is pushing that the technology is pushing the envelope of imagination 5G is going to completely change in your prior generation.

(03:54):
I mean you understand as you talk to a lot of MNOs 2G and 3G, they were able to bring a level of connectivity to automotive like I want to be able to track where my car is, can I unlock my car? But now we're pushing the envelope with this ultra low latency. We're talking about enhanced mobile broadband. We're talking about massive machine type communication that 5G brings. And if you step five years from now, I see things such as autonomous driving where you would have network slicing, let's say 5G would enable you to have network slicing and a dedicated slice that is only providing this service to autonomous vehicles, maybe SAE level three, four or five, and providing a level of SLA quality of service that is unparalleled, unmatched with any other network technologies that we had before. And how is HARMAN taking, let's say, or leveraging some of these technologies? So we've launched a product earlier this year called Harmon Ready Connect. Ready Connect is one of the industry's leading 5G telematics control unit aimed at democratizing connectivity inside the vehicle. I'd be happy to show you and talk to you a little bit more.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:11):
We're seeing the role that 5G will play. You mentioned network slicing there. Do you see that as a choice? We can use slicing because this is a bit of a contentious issue with the operators getting markets for these ideas? Or is this kind of necessary in order for us to actually fulfill all these ambitions we've got for connected mobility?

Suman Sehra, Harman International (05:35):
I think it could be, you could look at this as a face journey right now, the level of compute bandwidth, networking bandwidth that you have inside a vehicle. I mean, we're going through, like I said, meta offices of sorts within the automotive industry. There are different tailwinds. We're talking about electrification, we're talking about software defined vehicle architectures, the expectations for OEMs to meet the consumer demands like you and I as a consumer, we expect our cars to sort of transform or adapt to our lifestyle choices just like we update our phones, right? I know it's a very broad comparison, but to be able to gather all the intelligence process the data and drive reasonably accurate insights requires you to have a certain infrastructure inside the car with 5G low latency and edge computing coming and bringing those like cloud computing agility to the edge. Then you have AI or generative ai.

(06:37):
Combining those technology superpowers will make some of these things possible where you can offload compute, you can offload your workloads. Non-mission critical workloads can be processed at the edge and you could still have them in just near real time that you, I as a rider in the car or a driver in the car, you would have complete ubiquitous connectivity where your experiences seamless as if that workload was processed in the car itself. Now thinking about taking a step further, when you look into network slicing platooning as an example, I think platooning likely is one of the first use cases that the heavy trucks and those folks will want to use. We already see some of the OEMs coming to us asking for certain level of autonomy when the trucks or when these cars are being rolled out of their manufacturing plants and getting loaded onto the trucks or containers in the shipping yard, they're already doing that. It's not a future state. Now bringing those capabilities into real time when you're driving on a motorway auto bond or something similar would require you to have some sort of a dedicated slice to prevent network from getting over, let's say, used to protect that SLA and a quality of service that is required for autonomous driving.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:02):
So what I'm hearing also is that whilst 5G might be at the heart of this, it does require a lot of other technologies advances in technologies, and these are all coming together at about the right time to enable something more and the industry can take advantage of.

Suman Sehra, Harman International (08:19):
Absolutely. And I know you're going to be talking to many different personas in our automotive supply chain today. You will see the role of MNOs, you will see the role of automakers, you will see the role of companies like harman. I think this is a perfect melting pot and thinking about all these folks that are here at 5G, we are actually pushing the industry forward and we look at not just the technology, the problem sometimes the challenges are not always technical in nature. They can be business models, they can be policy matters, they can be regulatory, they can be standardization of various different things that are happening. Interoperability is such a key topic that we constantly debate in various working groups here at 5G on how do you ensure that if I am an OEM building a use case or delivering a certain experience in Europe, in Germany, how does that translate to when the car is actually used in India, when the car is used in America, when a car is used in Peru? So how do you drive that consistent user experience that stays true to the brand that I represent in the automotive industry.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (09:30):
Last question for you then. What's your message to the industry, to the automotive mobility industry, the telecoms industry? What challenges lie ahead that we need to overcome in order to make all this a reality?

Suman Sehra, Harman International (09:43):
To me, I would applaud 5GAA and the various member companies. We have a very open and transparent dialogue on matters that affect the industry. This is not about Harmon, this is not about company A, B, or C. This is truly about the industry. To me, the level of collaboration that we need to drive the public private, that is something that I would love to see go on to the next level. But then also bringing that collective wisdom of all the different personas in the value chain to say how do we help our regulators? How do we help our policy makers understand the true nature of the challenges that we face that are currently preventing, let's say, scale of a certain technology that has been tried, tested, and verified, and now it's time to put those things to practice and in real Scale.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:35):
Great. Well, Suman, thank you very much for talking with us and we do look forward to seeing how this develops in the coming years. Thank you very much.

Suman Sehra, Harman International (10:41):
Thank you for having me.