Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05):
Joining me now is Maxime Flament, the CTO of the 5G AA. Maxime, thanks very much for talking with telecom tv. Could I start by asking you to give us an overview of the technical work that the 5GAA and its members undertake?

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (00:21):
Thank you first for the offer of being here and really appreciate the Telecom TV for the invitation. Now, 5G has been very much targeting technical results and making sure that we end up with technical results that can be brought to the market as soon as possible. So we work on different topics, but broadly making sure that 3GPP standards, so the standards that are supported by telecom world actually are brought to the vehicles and these, and that we express the needs from the automotive so that these standards are fit for purpose.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:04):
Now I realize you do a lot of work in a lot of areas at the moment with the state of 5G at the moment. What does 5G enable in this sector today? What's possible on what's being commercialized today?

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (01:18):
So today, if you look around, most of the cars are already equipped with 4G, 5G. So this is a given. This is something that we have to take for granted and then we have to bring these to the next level. At the moment, we see the connectivity being used for telematics, for emergency calls, for infotainment, but eventually this has to be benefiting also some societal needs. And these societal needs are essentially safety, smart traffic, or even environmentally friendly solutions.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:57):
Well, let's talk about that in a little more detail. So as standards develop and as they evolve, as 5G evolves and matures, let's look five, six years in the future, how will this sector of change? What solutions will be enabled by then?

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (02:12):
So what we are looking at is an evolution of different 3GPP technologies and the standards, and therefore that would bring more reliance or more capability of using these technology for more reliable kind of use cases. And these use cases are often leading to more automation in the cars and they eventually better safety.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:44):
Now, here in Berlin, we saw and heard about a couple of approaches, a couple of demos concerning V two X. There was a network based V two X and there was a direct V two X. Can you explain what these two different approaches are and how they are complimentary?

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (03:00):
Yeah, so we showed two things, perhaps also different timings in terms of adoption of the market. We showed the connectivity to the mobile network, which is very scalable and that you can use today. These for this we showcase of vulnerable word user protection, so pedestrian and cyclist protections. We believe that this kind of technology is ready for market and that we can already use it to exchange the minimum set of data that would at least make the driver aware of the surroundings and aware of the potential pedestrians that are in front of the cars. Where leads to then is that it's not enough to just have one app and one driver that just receives this information. Where we want to go is that the pedestrians can use the app that they want to use, that the data that is being collected by these apps are shared into some kind of interchange servers.

(04:18):
And eventually when these are shared, they are then redistributed to the relevant driver that is coming the way of the buildable project. So the second part is the use of a new technology, which is called 5G-V2X Direct. And that technology is putting is as the name says, is directly connecting between vehicles and it has a very high throughput, very high reliability and enables then new kinds of interactions between the vehicles. These vehicles then can then eventually start coordinating themselves, having some kind of maneuver coordinations, and even sharing their sensors so that the traffic gets safer.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:18):
So it's a very clear picture of where we want to get to, but in order to do that, in order to make it a success, what does the industry and telecoms industry, the automotive industry, what does it have to do to ensure the success here?

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (05:32):
Now? The first thing that we have to make sure is that they talk to each other, they trust each other and that they agree on the best ways to harmonize the solutions across the different industries. And that entails definitely discussions that will then be taken by the market in the different parts of the world.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:59):
Well, Maxime, thanks very much for talking with us today.

Maxime Flament, 5GAA (06:01):
Thank you very much.