I have just read the new white paper released last February 2019 by the 5G-PPP with title “Business Feasibility Study for 5G V2X Deployment“. I believe that the entire document is worth a complete reading from the very first sentence until the very end. It provides very interesting and good insights into the business-related implications of 5G-enabled Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CAM) services.
In this post, I do not pretend to summarize the entire paper. Instead, I would only like to share with you 10 key take-away messages that I have literally extracted from the paper:
- “With more advanced Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) services, automated driving is seen as a technological highlight that will shape the future mobility concept and improve quality of modern life by providing traffic safety together with added environmental and information improvements.”
- “Connectivity, and more precisely V2X communications, is seen as one of key technological enablers of autonomous driving.”
- “…it is meanwhile widely accepted that future CAM services, ultimately leading to autonomous driving, will require a high level of connectivity of vehicles through an advanced communication technology as 5G V2X.”
- “…the first efforts to define a standard for V2X by 3GPP had already resulted into the LTE-based Release 14, where broadcast V2V communication is supported. In order to enable more advanced CAM services, 3GPP is currently working on Release 16, which will be the first 5G V2X standard, supporting different connectivity modes between vehicles.”
- “From the deployment perspective, it is non-realistic to expect that 5G V2X will be deployed over the whole road network within a short time period but will be rather deployed over a period of several years.”
- “…coexistence of 5G-based systems with legacy technologies such as 3GPP Rel.14/15 may be seen, also including possible synergies between those systems.”
- In the area of CAM, key stakeholders are: 5G industry (network operators, network and devices vendors), automotive industry, Standards Developing Organisations (SDOs), road infrastructure operators, policy makers, and users.
- “To cope with the large investment costs and to support the natural need for multi-operator vehicular communication, network operators also consider solutions of sharing network infrastructure and other resources. “
- At least, four possible sharing options are feasible: 1) passive infrastructure sharing, 2) active infrastructure sharing without spectrum sharing, 3) active infrastructure sharing with spectrum sharing, and 4) core network sharing.
- “The revenue models for the 5G V2X deployment are highly dependent and related to how revenues are, or can be, generated on the application level. … the monetization from the network is highly dependent on the services enabled by connectivity.”
So…5G-enabled CAM has the potential to disrupt the way we conceive mobility at local, regional, national, and transnational levels. Technology is today ready, and also continuously evolving to meet the growing needs of a new concept of mobility facilitated by the ultimate communication technology provided by 5G technologies.
Today, ongoing tests are demonstrating the potential of V2X technology to make mobility and driving safer and more efficient. However, along with technology, it is necessary to count with a proper regulation framework which allows for the development of positive business cases which, ultimately, foster the deployment of the required infrastructure to offer the new services to citizens and road users.
Motivated by this context, in 5GCroCo, we plan to conduct trials for 5G-enabled cross-national CAM services, and also to provide recommendations for regulation, standardization, and business case generation. 5GCroCo is a 17-million Euro innovation action, partially funded by the European Commission, which gathers efforts form both key telco and automotive players in Europe to bring 5G-enabled CCAM closer to becoming a commercial reality by 2021.
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Best,
Jesus
5GCroCo Project Coordinator
Jesus Alonso-Zarate 