Intelligent Transportation Systems Require Intelligent Mobile Networks

At the ITS World Congress last month in Detroit, we saw a wide range of intelligent transportation solutions and concepts. The most popular solutions on display –presented by several Auto Manufacturers, ITS suppliers, and Cisco along with partner Cohda Wireless – were simulated and live Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) demonstrations, which showed how vehicles will communicate to each other and to roadside infrastructure in the not-too-distant future. A key goal of V2V and V2I is safety, for drivers and pedestrians, as vehicles will be able to synchronize their movement with traffic lights, roads, toll plazas, rail crossings and of course other cars.

Cisco also showed how Connected Transportation solutions can leverage the intelligent – and virtualized – mobile core network. We demonstrated a [fictional] after-market connected car application (“CarConcierge”) that enables users to remotely start or unlock their car, do a car “health check,” and extract car-sourced analytics over an LTE mobile network. The demonstration showed how the Connected Transportation market will see an explosion of innovative new applications that mobile operators can monetize by providing secure, intelligent, and cost-effective connectivity and process automation to devices and vehicles.

Watch a video summary of the Cisco demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd61saXZkbY

Why a virtualized mobile core network for Connected Transportation? Operators who migrate to a telco cloud model for mobile infrastructure only need to deliver just the network resources that their Transportation customers consume. This eliminates the wasted costs of network over-provisioning for an application or service that doesn’t achieve usage forecasts – all the while meeting the real needs of customers with on-demand mobile network throughput and resources. To that end, Cisco’s virtualized Packet Core solution drew interest from a range of Transport industry players at ITS World Congress, including Auto OEMs, systems integrators, operators, Telematics SPs, app providers, analytics companies, equip suppliers, and more.

At ITS, Verizon announced just the type of service that can benefit from optimized, on-demand, virtualized mobile network resources. The Verizon Auto Share solution provides a hosted back-end with reliable mobile connectivity for other companies to offer branded car-sharing services. Using the Verizon car-sharing application on their smartphones or tablets, users will be able to unlock a car, check telematics status, and access other car features over the Verizon 4G LTE network. Verizon expects that the number and types of groups who will manage a fleet of vehicles for car-sharing communities will grow. Think of not only new ZipCar-like companies, but also enterprises and universities and cities who will create car-sharing programs for members of non-car owning communities.

This virtualized mobile cloud approach provides operators the economic model to go after Connected Transportation and other Internet of Things (IoT) markets in a profitable manner, and even permits pay-as-you-go and other flexible pricing models needed for new market penetration.

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