Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05):
Well, joining me now is Christophe Voigt, who's the chairman of the 5G aa. Christoph, thank you very much for talking with telecom tv. Nice to see you. Can you start by telling us a little bit more about the 5GAA and it's role and objectives?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (00:38):
The main idea of 5GAA is to bridge between the automotive and the telecommunications world in order to work together on the 5G technology and on the 5G vision.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:48):
So by bringing these two together, the telecoms and the automotive and mobility sector together, what do you hope to achieve though? What is the long-term objective? Is it purely about putting connectivity in vehicles and transport infrastructure or was it in more like services and developing services that can come off that?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (01:08):
So 5G is a game changer. So if you look back in the past, we just cop it smartphone and integrated smartphone technology in the car basically in order to bring internet to the car. But with 5G, the world has changed With 5G we have plenty of different functionalities which are car related, not longer just smartphone related and therefore we had to take care of the standard, the 5G idea and that was the reason why we founded 5GAA in order to really take care of that standard, which is now not just a mobile network standard but also our automotive standard.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (01:46):
So what is 5G doing today with the automotive and connecting mobility sector? What can 5G achieve in this sector today?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (01:53):
So for today, we are currently in the development of 5G solutions or have already deployed 5G in the car. So this is again about getting internet to the car but with a higher availability and especially with a better quality that's clear. But in parallel we are working on the C-V2X technology, it's cellular vehicle to everything and this is the technology which brings the car to speak with each other and we have already some deployments over the world and within the next couple of years, new deployments will come and the main idea behind it is we want for example, to improve safety. If you have a look on our showcase we shown last year with the school bus. So we want for example if the C-V2X technology help to protect our children, our children from fatalities, and that's the idea of C-V2X and basically the idea of the whole 5GAA.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:50):
Now technology advances rapidly if we start looking ahead to maybe the end of the decade, 5G should be rolled out more, should have more capabilities, more robust. We've also got new iterations of the specifications coming out. We're looking at 5G and beyond. Where does your work that you're doing today, especially on these demos and these trials we're seeing here, what will it look like in that five or six years time? What do you imagine this sector to look like?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (03:20):
So in the demos today we have a focus on the vehicle to network technology. So always the use cases around low latency, high broadband and so on. So this is a thing where we believe it helps us to get the cars connected. And what do you have to keep in mind? We currently have not only 5G but also with 4G. We have a two digit million number of cars on the road, which are sometimes at the table where we can get new features into it. So that's the idea of V2N. But on the other hand, if you have a look on the C-V2X technology, we defined at the very beginning of 5GAA, the LTE-V2X technology, the first generation of C-V2X. So we currently have deployments in China already on the road, United States is coming end to end and at the other hand we are now working on the second generation of C-V2X. So-called 5G-V2X and today you can see in the demos for the very first time worldwide you can see the 5G-V2X demo. It's working and this is the really, really exciting part of 5G.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:21):
Well I've seen the demo, I've been lucky enough to ride in one of the vehicles. It's very impressive. That's the future we're hoping to get to. What are the challenges between now and then? What do we as an industry or industries need to be aware of? What do we need to overcome?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (04:37):
This is a good question, but basically I would say it's not about challenges, it's about opportunities. So this week it's the 32nd 5GAA week. So since a very long time together and during this time we really have got a joint family. We are speaking the same language, we are working on the same 5G vision and therefore I'm honestly speaking very happy with that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:02):
So the 32nd week of meetings, what happened this week? What's the main objectives? What are you most proud of achieving this week?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (05:14):
There are different areas we are working on and the work items are starting with something which is very important for our industry, like new generation eco work items, which we're still working on it. Second, we are working on special work items around the vehicle to network technology and very important for here in order to be able to show that 5G-V2X demo. We have been working for example on so-called profiles for 5G-V2X. And this is basically a language which both cars for example and infrastructure have to understand. And this is meant with profiles and this is what we are doing within 5G. We are defining the technology, we are defining the language and we are getting all the stakeholders together in order to work on that. So that's the 5GAA week.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:04):
And for those companies in the telecoms industry that maybe not involved in 5GAA, you'd encourage 'em to take a look and participate?

Christoph Voigt, 5GAA (06:12):
We are an open organization and we are always open for new companies. So everybody is very, very welcome to join us and I believe that there is also the other hand, a big benefit to everybody because you have access to everything. We are working within 5GAA, you have access to all that information, you have access to the demos, to that conference part, and so on and so on. So in my eyes there was a huge benefit for everybody who wants to get access to their technology. Great. Christoph, thanks very much for talking with us. Thank you.