The Department of Transportation said neither it nor the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reached a decision on an NPRM proposing to mandate for new vehicles dedicated short-range communications designed to curb crashes (see 1711010047). DOT and NHTSA “have not made any final decision,” they said. “In all events, DOT hopes to use the dedicated spectrum for transportation lifesaving technologies.” Wi-Fi proponents hope to share the 5.9 GHz band previously allocated for DSRC.

AT&T has 16 million vehicles connected to its network and is adding about a million monthly, said Jeff Stewart, assistant vice president-global public policy, Wednesday on a Telecommunications Industry Association webcast. Another 2.5 million connected fleet vehicles are on the network, he said. Stewart noted AT&T announced a partnership Tuesday with Ford, Nokia and Qualcomm Technologies to test cellular-vehicle to everything technology (C-V2X) in San Diego (see 1710310019). C-V2X is “a possible alternative technology” to dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) being offered by automakers, he said. “We’ll be looking at how cellular-V2X can function and if it meets the needs of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications,” he said. Another AT&T focus area is how cellular technology can be used to extend the 300-meter range of DSRC systems, warning drivers of an accident before they get to it on the road.

Voxx will be the exclusive U.S. distributor for the Look-It wireless vehicle backup camera, a do-it-yourself system that works with a smartphone and built-in license plate frame camera, it said Friday. The camera, powered by Lightwave Technology, uses the smartphone as a display and works with iPhone or Android smartphones, Voxx said. The camera uses smart grid line calibration and can be adjusted with various camera angles to fit any vehicle’s size, and it’s IP67-certified. The system’s license frame houses a replaceable battery that can power the camera for up to four years, Voxx said, and the camera communicates with the phone wirelessly, eliminating the need for vehicle wiring. Drivers activate the camera by pressing a button on a remote mounted on the steering wheel or dashboard, which unlocks and opens the app displaying the image, Voxx said.

Sony will begin sampling next month the IMX324, a 1/1.7-inch-type stacked CMOS image sensor equipped with a 7.42 effective megapixel RCCC filter for forward-sensing cameras in advanced driver-assistance systems. The image sensor can produce roughly three times the horizontal resolution of conventional products, enabling HD image capture of distant objects such as road signs of up to roughly 525 feet away, said Sony. The IMX324 is expected to be compatible with image processors being developed by Intel’s Mobileye unit. A security feature protects the output image from being altered, Sony said. The sensor is on track to meet the AEC-Q100 Grade 2 reliability testing standards for automotive electronic components by June, it said.

Acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen will speak at an Oct. 17 TEDx event in Wilmington, Delaware, on transportation, she tweeted last week. TEDx Wilmington organizers announced the event's lineup in a YouTube video, saying Ohlhausen helped organize a workshop that focused on privacy and security implications of connected cars (see 1706280031). Other speakers include Lauren Smith, policy counsel who leads the Future of Privacy Forum's Connected Cars Working Group, Delaware Secretary of Transportation Jennifer Cohan and representatives of automakers, tech companies and transportation organizations.

Toyota representatives met with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr on the importance of dedicated short range communications technology in the 5.9 GHz band and the need to protect it from harmful interference. DSRC is being deployed, the automaker said in an FCC filing in docket 13-49, including most recently by Volkswagen. “The market leaders in Japan (Toyota), Europe (Volkswagen), and the United States (General Motors) have now either begun deployment of DSRC technology or announced a specific deployment plan for the technology.”

With SiriusXM in roughly 76 percent of cars on U.S. roads, it’s too early to gauge how “material” the impact to the company will be from hurricanes Harvey and Irma, CEO Jim Meyer told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Wednesday. “We've done business for a while, so we've obviously dealt with natural disasters before,” said Meyer. “Obviously, we've never dealt with two Category 4 hurricanes within a week, which has just been devastating for the country.” Harvey destroyed a “huge number” of cars in Texas, and “I suspect we're going to see the same thing in Florida” from Irma, “and so there will be a transition of the fleet,” he said. “There is going to be this immediate upswing in new vehicles.” Owners of those replacement vehicles will go first into three-month SiriusXM “trials before they are converted back” to full, paid monthly subscriptions, he said. “Almost all” who buy replacement cars will first need to have a “trial visit, and so the trial is going to be added to whatever subscription period they have left,” he said. “But the trial will become the front end of the subscription relationship.”

SiriusXM sees no “competitive issues” that would block regulatory approval of its deal to pay $480 million to buy 19 percent of Pandora (see 1706090005), Chief Financial Officer David Frear told the Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference Friday. “I can't imagine why DOJ would step in the way of this,” said Frear. Once the deal closes, under which SiriusXM will land three seats on the Pandora board, including that of chairman, “there are interesting strategic things that the two companies can do together,” said Frear. “There is a solid strategy and path execution for Pandora itself to really maximize its value.” The average Pandora user spends “20-somewhat hours a month on that site,” he said. Compared with how much time people spend on Facebook or YouTube, “it's just an enormous amount of time,” he said. “So they have tremendous customer engagement. There is a lot of information as it relates to what people like to listen to.” How SiriusXM “can plumb that for other aspects of value is going to be an interesting dialogue to have” with Pandora, he said. Most of the estimated 100 million cars on the road “are connected, and so we could engage them to the extent that there are people in those vehicles using the Pandora app and we could use that as a cross-marketing opportunity, right?” he said.

Obvious deficiencies with dedicated short range communications technology for vehicle-to-vehicle communications, married to the Department of Transportation's August downgrading of the DSRC mandate, shows why the FCC should maximize use of the 5.9 GHz band instead by unlicensed technologies, NCTA said in an FCC docket 13-49 filing posted Wednesday. The association said using the band for DSRC safety service is "an inefficient spectrum-warehousing effort," since it's unlikely most of the services and message types talked about by the Association of Global Automakers (AGA) will ever come to market, given lack of development of such services in recent years. It said assertions that six of the seven DSRC channels will be primarily for safety don't square with extensive commercial plans for DSRC. NCTA said the 5.9 GHz band isn't internationally harmonized for DSRC, and there are international indications of less interest in DSRC and more in connected vehicle technologies using LTE networks. It said automakers are divided on the efficacy of DSRC, and there are technologies like cellular-V2X capable of supporting vehicle safety in existing bands. AGA didn't comment. NCTA said DOT's downgraded its vehicle-to-vehicle communications proceeding status from "NPRM" to "undetermined." DOT didn't comment.

The FCC should limit the scope of waivers of user interface requirements requested by automobile manufacturers for rear entertainment systems, the Institute for Public Representation said on behalf of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and other consumer groups in an ex parte letter filed in docket 12-108. The item concerned an Aug. 23 meeting but was filed Friday. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, it was not possible to file until now,” the filing said. Both Honda and Fiat requested such waivers, the filing said.