Concept cars?

One of the latest developments in the connected-car ecosystem concerns vehicle-to-other (V2X) connectivity. Right now most solutions are focused on the in-car experience, but in the coming years V2X will enable communication between cars and roads as well as infrastructure and other cars to improve the collective safety-and-transportation experience. The Autotech Council estimates that this kind of technology could save 30,000 lives and three billion gallons of fuel each year. For CSPs there is plenty of room for development and innovation in the V2X space.

Racing to the finish line

The CSP that wins the most business in the connected-car space will be the one that offers the greatest flexibility and can seamlessly support the largest number of use cases. CSPs must break away from paradigm thinking, because the connected-car experience and how it’s delivered is incredibly complex and vastly different from traditional mobile. If we reverse-engineer from the customer experience we see that safety must come first — emergency calls have to be independent of a driver’s cellular service plan. “You can’t have something prompt in the middle of an automated collision call, ‘How do you want to pay for this?’” notes Doug Claus, manager of BMW’s Product Requirements and Development department.

CSPs should be looking “very carefully and deeply at how we can be innovative in how this thing called billing occurs — to whom does the bill go, and how and when, and who pays for what, etc.,” says Tim Johnson, global business development manager for Sprint Velocity. Mobile advertising also presents some revenue-generating options, provided it’s approached with fresh thinking: “There’s a lot more steam in the engine for advertising-based models if they’re done well.”

Dynamic strategies that focus on the end-to-end experience and accommodate various types of microtransactions and numerous ecosystem players will win. CSPs like Deutsche Telekom are just now bringing the speed of LTE into the car, which is a step in the right direction, and V2X offers ample room for growth as well. The path to pole position in the connected-car race will be curvy and full of obstacles, and navigating to the finish line will require the utmost in flexibility and innovation. CSPs, start your engines!