EU Governments, Industry Push to Make Connected Cars Reality

Europe's telecom and automotive industries will start testing connected cars in five EU countries this year, said the European Automotive Telecom Alliance (EATA). The move toward connected vehicles is part of a major EU effort to roll out 5G services that link to European Commission priorities such as the digital single market, the EC said in a November statement on cooperative intelligent transport systems. Transport and the automotive industry are "perhaps the most obvious 5G uses," said EC Vice President-Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Spectrum availability and harmonization, privacy, data protection and security issues remain unresolved, the EC and others said.

EATA members represent six sectors. At MWC, the organizations -- the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association, European Competitive Telecommunications Association, GSM Association, Global Mobile Suppliers Association, European Association of Automotive Suppliers and European Automobile Manufacturers Association -- unveiled their road map for testing connected and automated driving functionalities. The program kicks off this year in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, with other countries expected to join later, they said. EATA said it will collaborate with the 5G Automotive Association, with members including Ford, Verizon and Qualcomm, to test and promote communications solutions, support standardization and speed up commercial availability.

A "supportive regulatory environment is an essential foundation" for the take-up of connected and automated driving, EATA said. It urged the EU to ensure that broadband investment requirements "are supported by the necessary regulatory certainty," and not to overregulate privacy in order to ensure effective data flows. The first phase of testing will involve applications such as highway chauffeur, truck platooning and telecom network functions such as network slicing, hybrid communications and LTE broadcasting, EATA said. Starting next year, industry will focus on things such as valet parking and the concrete deployment of automated driving, including testing cross-border highway networks across the EU, it said.

The EC's top priority is making cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) available across the EU for end-users as soon as possible, its strategy document said. The cybersecurity of C-ITS communications is "critical" and needs action at European level, it said. It proposed a common security and certificate policy based on public key infrastructure technology for vehicles and public infrastructure elements. The EC said it will publish guidance on a security and certificate policy this year.

Another issue is privacy and data protection, the EC said. Connected cars won't be successful unless users know their personal data isn't a commodity and they can control how and for what purposes it's used, it said. Data broadcast by connected vehicles will, in principle, qualify as personal data, so systems will have to comply with applicable data protection laws, it said. The C-ITS system layout and engineering also must have privacy by design and by default, it said.

GSMA believes common privacy principles should apply to the connected car market in the same way that it encourages mobile operators to be consistent with its mobile privacy policies, a spokesman said. Openness, transparency, and notice and fairness of processing "should be factored into connected car technology," as should privacy by design, he emailed. It's "vital" that proposed EU e-privacy rules strike the right balance between innovation and privacy protection, the spokesman added.

Connected cars will have to be able to operate seamlessly across Europe, which can happen only through a hybrid communication approach that includes future technologies such as 5G and satellite communications, the EC said. The current most-promising hybrid communication mix is a combination of European Telecommunications Standards Institute ITS-G5 and existing mobile networks, it said.

The EC designated part of the 5.9 GHz band for safety-related applications in 2008, and initial deployment for short-range vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications will be based on technologies already available using that band, it said. Other issues that need to be resolved include interoperability, how to check services for compliance against EU-wide system requirements, and what regulatory and investment frameworks need to be in place for "Day 1 C-ITS" services to launch in 2019, it said.

The EC invited all EU members to work with it on a "genuine cross-border digital test field for cooperative, connected and automated mobility," said a spokeswoman. "This is an attempt to have all governments levels and industry teamed up to experiment with the technology and the enabling conditions." The EC is working with governments to create cross-border "corridors" for running real-life experiments, the spokeswoman said. Participants will pledge to provide the right conditions for conducting the experiments, including spectrum for seamless advanced mobile services and eventually 5G connectivity, the spokeswoman said. The EC allocated 71 million euros (about $75 million) to 13 projects to test C-ITS before the planned 2019 deployment of the first services, she said.