AT&T's car-connectivity formula: 5G plus edge compute plus standalone 5G

TORONTO – AT&T's connected-car goals aren't new and neither are its 5G ambitions, but the carrier's edge-computing buildout means this show can hit the road for real.

The Dallas firm has been making that pitch in a series of recent announcements, and in an interview at the Collision conference two AT&T executives expanded on that vision a bit.

"Now we're starting to talk about the convergence of network and cloud," said Igal Elbaz, AT&T's network chief technology officer. "And what are the different experiences that you need to enable within a vehicle."

A post Tuesday by AT&T CTO Jeremy Legg cited such 5G-fueled automotive possibilities as defining vehicle-specific network slices "to prioritize safety and mission critical functions of the car, separate from the connectivity used for in-car infotainment," and deriving "hyper precise positioning" from 5G signals "for intelligent transportation systems, teleoperations, autonomous driving and to identify potential roadside obstacles in advance."

That, Elbaz said, doesn't mean that AT&T is trying to revive the early hype about 5G being the thing that makes self-driving cars possible. Rather, he clarified, auto-specific slicing will be "a network enabler that we're going to bring forward when the time is appropriate."

And while Elbaz did not hesitate to brag about the reach of AT&T's midband 5G – "that's going to go pretty much everywhere," he predicted – the connected-car vision here doesn't require a completely filled-in coverage map.

"There is no way to cover every square inch in the US, and there's always going to be some small white spaces," he said. But he voiced optimism in "new capabilities like non-terrestrial networks," citing AT&T's partnership with AST SpaceMobile, which in April yielded successful voice calls routed via AST SpaceMobile's BlueWalker 3 low-Earth-orbit satellite.

"Most every car company is thinking about augmenting cellular with satellite," chimed in Mike Troiano, senior vice president for product at AT&T Business.

Edge zones

He and Elbaz also emphasized the role of two 5G advances outside of coverage in this vehicular strategy: the carrier's ongoing, if quiet, activation of standalone 5G, plus its launch of 5G "edge zones" across the US last year that offer lower-latency access to computing resources and virtualized network features and which now cover 65% of the US population.

"We converge our network into the regional cloud locations," Elbaz explained. "We're also building a software layer on top of this that allows us to build a robust set of APIs [application programming interfaces] that can be exposable and really built as a digital platform."

AT&T is being less specific about what automakers might want to do with that, although Elbaz and Troiano ticked off such connected-car possibilities as entertainment, roadside assistance and autonomous remote control.

In a podcast appearance recorded at MWC23, Cameron Coursey, vice president of AT&T connected solutions, suggested a more out-there possibility: A car could use its exterior-facing cameras to recognize its owners and automatically unlock for them.

To be clear, AT&T's strategy around connected cars is evolving along with the rest of the industry. For example, AT&T recently revived its old "Connected Solutions" business unit – with Cameron Coursey as its chief – to help the operator navigate the intersection between 5G and IoT. The first area of focus for AT&T Connected Solutions is connected cars.

Further, AT&T isn't alone. T-Mobile recently announced progress in two connected car efforts: The company is testing C-V2X technologies with the city of Bellevue, Washington, and it's powering driverless rental car services with Halo in Las Vegas.

Carmaker concerns

Automakers, meanwhile, are earlier in their deployment cycle. GM said in 2021 that it would commit to installing AT&T 5G in its vehicles, but that announcement said the first such cars would only arrive in 2024 model years. Ford offered a shorter time frame for 5G in-car support last September, but for the 2023 model year only one truck model will offer this connectivity.

"Only now they're in the process of starting to enable vehicles with 5G connectivity," commented Elbaz.

Troiano added that while some auto-industry types are bullish on the idea of adding an emergency-teleoperation feature ("if something goes wrong with that vehicle, a third party has the ability to take over, steer it to the side of the road"), the regulatory environment remains muddy.

"I think there are only 14 states or so that have passed legislation on this topic," he said. Asked what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration thought about these possibilities, he waved off the query: "I'm not at liberty to answer that question."

The precise positioning capabilities of 5G called out in that Legg post could also help with vehicular autonomy, but Elbaz and Troiano both suggested it would first appear in private confines.

"I think the biggest use case in the near term will be around robotics, warehouses, large yards, if you will," Troiano said.

It's already been a long road for AT&T's connected-car efforts, one that's included some u-turns by manufacturers. For example, Audi signed on with AT&T in 2014 but switched to Verizon in 2020. But Elbaz said this confluence of developments at AT&T – network, edge compute and standalone – mean it's time for this concept to pull out of the garage, assuming automakers, app developers and regulators are up for the ride as well.

"The platform for innovation exists," he said. "I think there's a level of interest there; the ecosystem appreciates the investment in the build; now we need to see this happening."

— Rob Pegoraro, special to Light Reading. Follow him @robpegoraro.