Ten years into the current smartphone revolution some people and organizations still do not realize what is happening. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the automotive industry where regulators and industry associations continue to take a top down approach trying to build consensus and promote mandates in a market in the throes of being recreated from the bottom up by massive mobile device disruption.

Disruptive change is coming from the radiating ripple effect of global smartphone adoption transforming consumer behavior and content and application consumption patterns.  For the automotive industry, the latest twist on this disruption is the rapid proliferation of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies on mobile devices.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technologies are disrupting everything from traffic data gathering to content consumption and, most recently, safety.  Smartphone users have seen their use of mobile phones in cars changed by Bluetooth hands-free interfaces (HFI) and have tapped audio streams through their car stereos with Bluetooth’s advanced audio distribution profile (A2DP),.   Now Wi-Fi Direct has emerged to change safety.

And GM has emerged as the Pied Piper of Wi-Fi Direct after revealing its own internal studies demonstrating how Wi-Fi Direct technology in cars might be used to detect the presence of pedestrians’ smartphones by detecting their Wi-Fi signals.  (http://bit.ly/MM47w9 -How Your Smartphone Could Stop a Car From Running You Over)  In this way, Wi-Fi Direct could be used as an enhancement to existing sensor-based safety systems to help drivers avoid pedestrians – or to at least be alerted to their presence – in a low-latency sub-second manner – without connecting to a wireless cellular network.

V2X via smartphone integration

The announcement of GM's new findings follows a presentation at Telematics Update V2X for Auto Safety and Mobility 2012 in Novi, Mich., where GM engineer Donald Grimm presented a vision of V2X technology deployment via aftermarket devices and smartphones.  The new Wi-Fi Direct concept from GM published last week solves a problem raised by attendees of the TU event, regarding the detection of pedestrians in a V2X-enhanced world built around Digital Short Range Communication technology – the 802;11p-based technology upon which V2X is being defined.

DSRC-equipped cars will have no way of detecting pedestrians.  But Wi-Fi Direct-enhanced cars will have this ability and in fact could deliver this technology today.

By swapping DSRC technology for Wi-Fi Direct, GM is highlighting the shortcomings of DSRC technology, the adoption of which has created a chicken and egg scenario.  DSRC technology will work best once all cars equipped with the technology to enable enhanced traffic and collision avoidance applications.

But DSRC technology has no subscription or revenue component, making it an expensive vehicle enhancement requiring additional hardware, software and enabling infrastructure. To succeed, DSRC is ikely to require a top down government mandate and a homogenization of global standards to take hold.  GM is pointing the way toward a life-saving technology already widely distributed among consumers on their mobile devices.

In the presentation given at the TU event earlier this year, the GM engineer suggested the possibility of DSRC technology being built into smartphones – a clever but expensive and pointless exercise, particular in light of Wi-Fi Direct’s availability.  Further impairing the vision of smartphone deployment of DSRC are issues of power consumption and in-vehicle docking of the device.

The beauty of the new GM proposition is its use of existing devices – smartphones – and existing standards-based technology – Wi-Fi Direct – to save lives without the creation of new standards, new hardware or new mandates.  Bike messengers and pedestrians wanting to take advantage of the new technology might be able to install an app to enhance the sensing process.

Implications

The rapid adoption of Wi-Fi Direct will get far greater impetus in a competitive environment, such as that implied by GM’s research and potential implementation, than by a collaborative standards-setting activity such as that associated with the ongoing V2X activities or the mandate approach characterized by Europe’s ill-conceived eCall initiative.  GM researchers are proposing that cars simply tap into the surrounding wireless signaling environment to help avoid collisions.

In a similar way, roadside Bluetooth sensors are increasingly being deployed by organizations such as TrafficCast, Siemens and others to glean highly accurate insights regarding traffic flow from passing motorists and their Bluetooth-equipped smartphones.  There are wider implications and a growing roster of new applications enabled by this ad hoc sensing process.

The most important takeaway of all, of course, is the critical role of the smartphone as a self-contained safety system in the car.  A Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi Direct-enhanced device is capable wirelessly communicating its location up to 600 feet away as well as sensing nearby devices.

This sensing and contextual awareness has life-saving implications for drivers and pedestrians and the differentiating market development opportunities are emerging faster than an application download.  It is for this very reason that open application platforms in cars in the form of smartphone interfaces are so important.

In an ironic twist, the deployment of safety systems taking advantage of Wi-Fi Direct signaling are likely to benefit from existing research into DSRC signal propagation and interpretation.  So all that DSRC work won’t be going to waste.

The scanning for the presence of pedestrians is clearly a local, on-board application in the car, but there will be opportunities to process the sensor inputs in a cloud platform for added value insights.  And it is likely that such a system will need upgrades or updates on a regular basis as enhancements to the detection algorithms are discovered.

It’s just another way smartphones are driving live-saving changes from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.  Wi-Fi Direct can save lives, but not if smartphones are banned or their functionality is compromised.

Best Buy continues to report horrendous comparable store sales and negative financial results with no clear end in sight.  The only two bright spots are mobile phones and appliances.  Consumer electronics sales are in the tank and headed further south along with services and content revenue. 

At a time like this one would expect Best Buy to be experimenting wildly all across its hundreds of stores, desperate to solve the marketing and merchandising riddle that has riddled its results with parentheses, the corporate code for negative comparisons.  What is unfolding instead is an apparent stay the course mentality sure to doom the chain to the kind of accelerating decline that has already claimed Circuit City, CompUSA and a growing roster of other once-great retailers.

I wrote a blog more than a year ago (http://bit.ly/hN2p7D - Best Buy Rewiring OEM-Retail Relationships with Sync, Focus, OnStar Deals) speculating that Best Buy had a unique opportunity to leverage a budding outreach to Detroit with its mobile electronics and installation capabilities to make a bold statement around vehicle connectivity.  The chain maintains on-site installation facilities to support its mobile electronics business and mobile phones remain a bright spot in sales results.

Little has changed since I wrote that blog.  Best Buy has not spruced up the mobile electronics department and the mobile phone department remains in the front of the store.  Yet, while Best Buy’s merchandise presentation has changed little, the market has moved along and Best Buy faces new threats.

At the core of the new challenge facing Best Buy is the retailer’s insistence on resisting classic merchandising strategy.  With mobile phones and related wireless devices as the main draw, it’s time to shift this department to the rear of the store – where a grocery might stock eggs, milk and butter.

The mobile phone department is not more than 20-30 feet from the entrance to the typical Best Buy store.  By shoving the most popular department category in the store to the very front, the opportunity to pitch digital cameras, notebook computers and, dare I say it, mobile electronics, to mobile phone shoppers has been lost.

But the new threat lies in the fact that Apple Stores are beginning to get into the in-vehicle connectivity business.  Here is where Best Buy has been caught flat-footed.  While Best Buy has bumped up its assortment in the mobile electronics department – based on recent store visits – to nearly three dozen head units ranging in price from <$199 to nearly $1,000, the department is still undermanned.

But a greater sin than having this department undermanned is the fact that low-volume mobile electronics have been hidden in the back of the store where one would expect to find the high traffic milk and eggs.  Despite renewed investment in mobile electronics, the average customer faces a huge challenge simply finding the department.

This is a sorry state of affairs when aftermarket companies are rushing to market a wide range of mobile phone connectivity products that probably belong in mobile electronics and might stimulate otherwise lackluster sales.  Instead, companies with innovative aftermarket offerings are insisting on merchandising their products in the mobile phone department – especially since that department is planted squarely in front of the store entrance.

Best Buy has made no secret of the fact that it sees connectivity as the key to its future.  If that is so, it is probably time to ditch the huge portion of in-store space devoted to content – ie. shiny discs – and give that space over to mobile phones and other connectivity offerings.

Bring the mobile electronics out of the shadows in the rear of the store and properly merchandise in-vehicle connectivity alongside the mobile devices consumers want to connect in their cars – from distracted driving mitigation products and insurance telematics offerings (Get your Progressive module from Best Buy? Why not?) to rearseat entertainment integrations for tablet computers and in-vehicle Wi-Fi solutions.

How about aftermarket safety systems from MobileEye, stolen vehicle recovery systems from Guidepoint and LoJack, or backup cameras and social network enhanced radar detectors (where legal).  It is worth noting that even Escort now offers a radar detector in the Apple Store.

Implications

Best Buy has a new competitor in the mobile electronics business in the Apple Store.  As if the department didn’t have enough challenges with the decline of aftermarket rearseat entertainment systems and portable navigation devices and the evaporation of the satellite radio retail business, now Apple’s retail juggernaut has the car stereo business in its sights.

It’s not too late for Best Buy to strike back and defend its legitimate claim to mobile electronics market leadership.  But to do so, Best Buy needs to shove the mobile phone department into the center and perhaps toward the rear of the store.  This high volume department needs to perform its critical task of leading customers deeper into the store where a wider array of impulse purchases await.

Simultaneously, Best Buy needs to bring the mobile electronics department into direct proximity with the mobile phone department.  The synergies between these two departments are manifest and Best Buy needs to capitalize especially given the fact that – as a destiny retailer – Best Buy customers have to DRIVE to the store in the first place.

By merchandising mobile electronics in the rear of the store, Best Buy is leaving fabulous marketing opportunities and money on the table.  At the same time, the store is telling consumers that mobile electronics simply are not a major priority.  It’s not too late for Best Buy to put things right in its mobile department.  Who knows, it might save the company.

Yesterday evening, while driving home from meetings in the New York metropolitan area, I had an extraordinary traffic information experience which highlighted a company in the traffic business that doesn’t often get much credit.  I am writing this blog as a shout out Clear Channel Commnication’s Total Traffic Network and as a plea for a new service: Traffic on Demand.

To better understand my story one must understand the traffic landscape.  There are several variables to getting traffic information correct and there are several kinds of traffic information.  The two most important elements of traffic information are incident and flow data. 

There is a widespread belief that real-time traffic flow information from organizations such as Waze and Google is “good enough.”  This perception makes life difficult for supplers such as TomTom, Inrix and Nokia Location & Commerce that want to charge for their traffic data.  These three competitors do their best to deliver real-time flow and incident information along with predictive traffic models – to allow them to enhance navigation routing instructions.

The quality and accuracy of traffic flow data is steadily improving thanks to the addition of more and more vehicle-based data probes.  Flow data is also benefiting from advances in roadside sensor technology – for example, from the implementation of Bluetooth sensors from a wide range of companies including TrafficCast, Traffax, Siemens, Philips and several university research organizations.

But as competitive pressures have grown, traffic information providers have had to reduce their investments in traffic observation resources.  Traffic observers help to enhance the publicly available sources of information regarding traffic incidents, the causal element behind traffic jams.

Knowing why traffic is backed up can play a big role in predicting when traffic will improve or how much worse it might get.  Also, knowing why traffic is backed up takes the stress and anxiety out of being in traffic.  If a driver knows traffic is backed up for a presidential motorcade, a tire changer, or a police emergency it allows him or her to relax and appropriately adjust expectations regarding the potential for clearing up the traffic snarl.

Historically, traffic helicopters provided the best insights regarding causality for traffic events.  But traffic helicopters have almost completely disappeared, in most instances replaced by ubiquitous roadside cameras.

Second only to helicopters are fixed observation points and control rooms manned by operators monitoring fixed cameras.  While many organizations in the industry have either drastically reduced or completely eliminated these investments, Clear Channel Communication’s Total Traffic Network maintains the largest private traffic monitoring network in the U.S., with 16 regional traffic hubs operating 24/7 and 10 smaller satellite offices.  TTN also maintains a proprietary network of traffic cameras as well as some aircraft all feeding the company’s TrafficNet internal traffic data platform which in turn feeds services including SigAlert and Metro Traffic as well as embedded navigation systems.

My story is all about the “why” factor in traffic data and easing anxiety.  I was southbound on Route 95 north of Philadelphia Friday afternoon when I noticed police cars blocking entrance and exit ramps on both sides of the highway around Cottman Avenue.  Traffic was understandably backed up on the northbound side of the highway though not, thankfully, on my side, southbound.

Still, as the magnitude of the back-up on the other side the Jersey barrier became clearer and as that data appeared as black backup icons on my embedded navigation system, I began to get curious as to what might be the cause of the unfolding event.  I had just gotten off the phone with an executive from TrafficCast who had mentioned he was in the Philadelphia area, so I immediately rang him back up.  TrafficCast is pursuing the deployment of Bluetooth-based sensors throughout the U.S. under the BlueToad brand with a recent win in the Boston area.

Two or three failed calls later, I decided to call executives at TangoTraffic to see if they might have some insight into the situation I was witnessing which, by now, had revealed itself as a multiple-mile backup.  TangoTraffic is a traffic-only cable channel, not unlike the Weather Channel, but focused entirely on local traffic.

TangoTraffic, which includes on its team some former Traffic.com executives and uses a Nokia L&C traffic data feed, is based in Malverne, Pa., not far from Philadelphia, so I was sure they’d have some idea what was going on.  Unfortunately, there was no answer.  I then called two Inrix executives, but no answer there either, likely due to vacations.  Inrix is rapidly closing in on global traffic information market leadershiop and is actively leading the industry shift to IP-based traffic information platforms.

With no success trying to reach Inrix, I turned, finally, to my most reliable traffic info source and on the second try got a vice president from Total Traffic Network on the phone.  Literally within seconds this executive was able to tap his TrafficNet database to tell me that the backup was the result of the funeral procession for Officer Brian Lorenzo, an off-duty, though in uniform, motorcycle highway police officer who had been killed two days before by a wrong way driver on the very highway on which I was traveling.

As a final note, the TTN executive let me know that by now, about 10 minutes after passing the origin of the tie-up, the highway ramps had been re-opened and traffic should be moving freely soon.

Implications

Good enough traffic information is only good enough until it isn’t good enough.  Witnessing the massive backup for the funeral procession of Office Lorenzo reminded me that real-time traffic flow info is not good enough.  There are few things more humbling to a driver than being trapped in his or her personal metal cage in a traffic jam.

Conversely, there is nothing more empowering than having access to the digital resources to make sense of the surrounding traffic conditions to be able to plan and respond accordingly.  Incident data is the key to unlock that power and Total Traffic Network is the market leader in delivering timely, accurate traffic incident data.

Traffic solutions are improving, contrary to the popular impression that traffic data services are as good as they are ever going to get.  BMW’s new IP-based, TPEG-capable traffic delivery platform for the new 7 Series will deliver more information, faster and in more granular increments along the highway, enabling what can only be called high resolution traffic information.

Traffic information has improved and is improving.  Enhanced access to more accurate and timely incident information is just one form of improvement.  As IP delivery of traffic information transforms the market it will be interesting to see how the quality and quanitity of traffic information is impacted.

TTN's analog human assets may be its most powerful tools in an increasingly digital world.  But what my situation called for was analog access to this digital information.  What if, instead of talking to a TTN VP, I were able to access the TrafficNet database - or some other cloud resource - by voice to understand the traffic situation surrounding me.  The traffic application within Harman's Aha Radio - enabled as it is by Inrix - is a step in this direction, but there is no reason why traffic on demand or traffic as a service could not be enabled.

More progress will come from image recognition being brought to traffic cameras along with crowd sourcing and wider deployment of more accurate Bluetooth-based roadside sensors.  In the end, though, there is no substitute for the human factor – the ability to identify causal factors for traffic incidents, report those causes, and point out solutions for stressed out drivers…like me.  But traffic on demand is the new frontier and TTN can make it happen.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

I am happy to report watching with great amusement the Siri television advertisements featuring John Malkovich.  (See here on Youtube: http://huff.to/MYi4X7)  Very droll and certainly tantalizing from a speech recognition standpoint seeming to reflect, as claimed by Siri's parent Apple, that the Siri recognition engine is capable of learning the inclinations and preferences of each individual user.  As an automotive analyst, however, I've had to give those ads a harder second look.

Siri arrives in the marketplace at a time when government regulators in the U.S. - and in some geographies outside the U.S. - are focusing on driver distraction.  Siri appears to have been rapidly seized upon by multiple car makers as the ultimate solution to the distraction mitigation challenge.  The suitability of Siri to this task is posited by its alter ego brand name: EyesFree.  The promise of using Siri in the car is to achieve an EyesFree means of accessing features and functions on the iPhone.  Of course it is not quite hands-free because Apple is promoting the application with a steering wheel mounted trigger. 

(It is worth noting that engineers at Waze divined a way to use the proximity sensor as a trigger mechanism, but that is a separate story.)

Nevertheless, a tidal wave of what can only be called Siri hysteria ensued.  Apple, it seemed, had solved the automated voice recognition challenge singlehandedly.  It is at this point that I feel a word of caution is advised.  It wasn't so long ago, maybe six or seven years, that Bluetooth was embraced as the definitive answer to hands-free phone interfaces.  To be sure, Bluetooth has proven helpful, but it is far from a panacea, even after all these years of development and refinement.

The challenge for both Bluetooth and voice recognition is the fact that the implementers of these technologies continue to ask them to do more.  Bluetooth has not yet completely conquered HFI and the industry is already moving on to A2DP and SPP profile implementation.  AVR systems have not yet mastered one-shot destination entry and now car makers are introducing dictation and email and text message composition.  And Siri is more or less offering voice-based access to most iPhone functionality.

As you watch and chuckle over John Malkovich chatting with his iPhone remember that he is conducting his conversation in an utterly empty and quiet salon while relaxing in an arm chair.  This is nowhere near the operating environment of a noisy automobile cabin.

And to which organization should a car maker turn to solve its AVR challenges?  The maker of mobile devices held in the hand or to an organization built entirely around solving voice recognition challenges in a wide range of environments with a particular emphasis on automotive systems? 

Cloud-enhanced recognizers such as Apple's Siri may learn my inclinations and preferences and Google's Now AVR app may access Google's Knowledge Graph with 500 million entities and 3.5 billion relational facts, but neither of these organizations can offer car makers their undivided attention.  Robust voice-based solutions are to be found within the existing automotive eco-system and will reflect the priorities of the OEMs around quality of service.

Implications

Bluetooth is a powerful technology but it has caused many complaints while solving problems and enabling new forms of content and service delivery.  AVR technology is viewed as one of the key interface modes that will contribute to resolving distracted driving, but it is far from perfect or perfected. 

But the organizations that have taken AVR the furthest and are likely to continue to lead in the automotive market are already invested in the automotive market and present.  These organizations include Vlingo, Nuance (Dragon Go!), AT&T (Watson) and Microsoft (Tellme).  Car makers should take greater care before embracing a technology that may or may not satisfy customers, may or may not solve regulatory challenges, may or may not enable new features and functions - but will definitely generate customer confusion and aggravation.

The latest JD Power Iniitial Quality Study highlighted the fact that AVR systems are the leading cause of customer complaints.  This is significant given the fact that the study was conducted in the U.S. among a fairly homogeneous population of English speakers.  What happens to AVR technology outside the U.S. where dialiects are more numerous and more challenging.  Will it really be worth marring an existing HMI environment in the car with a steering wheel add on to accommodate a single phone maker.  Maybe, but as we take that risk let's do so with eyes wide open and with the intention of avoiding a repitition of past HMI blunders.

Because Siri was not conceived specifically for automotive use and because Apple does not provide for any distraction mitigation measures, the Siri proposition is an application free for all.  Siri enables all functions - maybe - instead of delivering a few very specific functions reliably and safely.  That, in the end, is the big difference between Siri and existing (or in development) automotive grade AVR systems.  Proceed with caution.

Tuesday the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on the European Commission and the Member States to make sure the eCall system will be installed into every new vehicle by 2015. The absurdity of this proposition grows with each passing day and yet the EC refuses to acknowledge and accept its increasingly obvious irrelevance.

With the ubiquity of mobile phones and the crowded condition of most European highways, the likelihood of a crash causing serious injuries and going unreported is slender at best. A smartphone-based solution along the lines of what Ford and Daimler have proposed will not only provide an immediate solution available to all new car buyers, but will also enable a more robust system capable of delivering far more than the minimum set of data specified in the in-band modem-based eCall standard.

A more immediate concern for regulatory authorities will be to ensure the availability of emergency response personnel and equipment and to prepare public service access points (PSAPs) to receive the widest possible range of communications from the accident scene including phone calls, text messages, voice-over-IP communications, and video. As things stand, the majority of PSAPs are not even equipped to receive the minimum set of data via in-band modem transmission.

Instead of offering a proposition capable of immediately saving lives, the EC continues to bury its head in the sand refusing to accept the disruptive impact that mobile phones have had on emergency communications. The EC is mandating the use of in-band modem, data-over-voice, technology that the majority of European PSAPs are simply not equipped to receive and interpret. Meanwhile, private eCall solutions from PSA, BMW and Volvo are already in place in most, though not all, of the 27 EU member countries.

The EC’s insistence on an embedded modem guarantees that car makers will be compelled to provision two modems on most cars, if they choose to offer their own diagnostic and customer-relationship targeted devices. OEMs will want to deploy embedded LTE technology for product life cycle reasons, once it is available and coverage is adequate. A 2015 mandate will likely force car makers to implement existing modules for eCall, hence the prospect of a dual modem scenario.  (Renault's launch of R-Link, with its EDGE modem, is a classic example of this phenomenon, providing an app store but no diagnostics or automotic crash notification.)

Smartphones as one eCall alternative; and what about privacy?

The immediate challenge ought to be to assist car makers in bringing whatever system they can to market to solve the problem – including smartphone-based solutions such as those from Ford Europe and Daimler. In other words, the EC ought to back off on the technology mandate and simply require automakers to select whatever solution is suitable to fulfill the emergency notification and minimum data set requirement.

As the eCall debate has played out over the past decade, the growing inappropriateness of the mandated technology has only become magnified by changing wireless communications technology and growing concerns regarding privacy. When the debate over eCall began, LTE was barely on the radar of automotive planners. Today, LTE is a primary concern for OEMs planning to embed modems in their cars all over the world.

The eCall mandate, which was originally seen as opening the door to enable a wider range of embedded telematics services, is now morphing into a separate standalone module destined to provide a redundant and outmoded vehicle connection. Today. no car maker seeking to provide access to emergency services via an embedded modem will want to have that provision managed by a device using in-band modem technology.

In the United States, where so-called Next Gen 911 technology is being contemplated, there is no public authority talking about a “minimum set of data.” The focus of regulators and safety advocates is clearly on enabling the most complete access to accident scene information, particularly via the mobile phones of the affected parties. The NG911 agenda is intended to ensure that PSAPs are prepared and equipped to receive all forms of data and voice communication. And there is no requirement at all for car makers to embed a device.

Sixteen years after the launch of OnStar it is clear that the emergence of the mobile phone obviates the need for an embedded device. (Just imagine for a second the responsibility and liability implicit in a failure of an eCall module to perform in a crash. The legal implications are enough to give one pause although I am sure the disclaimers have already been crafted.)

LTE deployment changes everything

Europe is already behind the telecommunications technology curve with its plodding rollout of LTE technology relative to North America and Asia. Once a global wireless leader, the EU’s wireless network strength has been leapfrogged leaving the region mired in battles over roaming charges and, now, an antiquated eCall mandate.

Rather than fostering a robust debate about how best to leverage LTE technology and smartphone connections to save lives in automobile crashes, the EC continues to stick to its eCall guns. This obstinacy continues in spite of studies conducted by NXP Semiconductors and others showing the superiority of even SMS technology to the anointed in-band modem solution.

Finally, the emergence of privacy issues has further doomed eCall, but the EC refuses to acknowledge the obvious. At some future date – with a fully rolled out eCall solution – cars will call public service access points directly. Still unclear is whether or how the car maker, the car dealer, the insurance company or the next of kin will be notified in the event of an injury or fatality. There is no provision within the eCall mandate for any of these parties to be notified of the condition of the car and its occupant(s). There isn’t even a provision for notifying next of kin.

In the end, car makers are likely to feel compelled to embed their own modems for vehicle diagnostic and customer relationship management purposes, while car dealers and insurance companies may seek to plug in their own modules. Instead of a single module vision of vehicle connectivity – eventually to be joined by a V2X add-on once standards are converged – the EU will yet again be at a disadvantage in the vehicle connectivity game – hobbling European car makers with a well-meaning mandate more than 10 years in the making that has yet to save a single life.

It may be crass to point out, but the scene of an accident is a huge economic opportunity for the insurance company, the dealer and the OEM. Accident aftercare is a multi-billion dollar opportunity and one to which embedded telematics holds the key. The sooner the EC aligns itself with the economic interest that is at stake, the sooner real understanding and progress might be achieved.

A single point of call dispatch

The only way the EC could possibly rescue the ill-conceived venture will be to institute a single PSAP strategy providing an EU-wide dispatch capability along the lines of the solution adopted by the U.K. and proposed by Russia for its own eCall system. Of course, such a system will be expensive and difficult to justify. No, clearly the EC feels it is far easier to simply push the problem onto already financially burdened car makers. (Which OEM is shutting down European production THIS week?)

But a simpler solution lies in the mobile phone. If the EC were to finally and definitively accept smartphone integration as a solution supporting eCall functionality it would resolve the conflict in a flash. With such an approach the organization will also be opening the door to a far more robust emergency response solution.

The typical smartphone today comes with a quad-core processor, compass, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope and GPS. In fact, the average smartphone has the sensor equivalent of a military-grade unmanned aerial vehicle’s avionics system. Add front and back cameras, voice recognition and access to cloud services and you have a remote diagnostic and communication package capable of acting as a remote crash scene assistant.

Instead of exploring the possibilities of smartphone connectivity for enabling and facilitating emergency response, the EC continues to insist on its narrow, retrograde approach to technology: the in-band modem. Leveraging the smartphone – perhaps requiring that it be firmly fixed in the car in some fashion – will also quiet the qualms of European wireless carriers leery of adding modules to the network that will add stress but no revenue.

(The GSMA has gone so far as to make the ridiculous proposal of a “dormant SIM” to address this stress-with-no-revenue concern. No OEM is interested in installing a dormant SIM in its vehicles regardless of the benefit to the carrier.)

The single occasion where an embedded communication device might come to the rescue of a driver – ie. in the event of a crash that takes place outside of a populated area – is precisely the circumstance where the embedded module is likely to fail to find a network. And in that event, should a passing motorist see the crash, they are less likely to call, since they will assume the call has already been made by the vehicle.

A smartphone with a proper vehicle connection is the more suitable solution for car crash emergency response in the absence of an embedded solution. The EC should make explicit provision for smartphone connectivity along the lines of Ford and Daimler systems and then focus on bringing the PSAP network up to a higher and more uniform standard for receiving crash scene voice and data.

Implications

An EC mandated eCall module is destined to become a single-function device burdening European OEMs with unnecessary cost and redundant functionality with little benefit to carrier or car maker. The sooner the EC abandons this folly, the better.

If the goal is to save lives and to speed emergency response to crash scenes the swiftest solution to the problem lies in smartphone connectivity. The EC can retake the global emergency response initiative and achieve a measure of wireless communications leadership were it to adopt a smartphone solution to this problem.

Only by removing itself from the process of defining the technology to be used to solve this problem will the EC truly stimulate competitive innovation in the marketplace. The most helpful contribution the EC can make will be to develop a program for a single point of dispatch and foster technology development and adoption for the PSAPs themselves.

In an ideal world, cars should only require a single connectivity box suitable to fulfill all forms of connectivity functions thereby limiting the number and variety of supporting hardware and software systems for gathering and transmitting vehicle data in a secure manner. With the onset of LTE, OEMs will want this module to handle embedded emergency functions but continental deployment of LTE is yet in its earliest stages – all the more reason to leave the eCall function to the smartphone for the time being.