WASHINGTON, D.C.–AT&T has 32 million connected cars operating on its network, as well as 5 million fleet vehicles. At this week’s Washington Auto Show, Jeff Stewart, AVP for global public policy at AT&T Services, called connected vehicles “a key growth area” for the carrier, which he said has been adding vehicle connections at a rate around 1.5 million in recent quarters.
“It’s become a key component of our overall IoT business,” he added.
Stewart said in a panel discussion that AT&T provides cellular connectivity for 31 different automotive brands — “virtually almost the entire industry, at this point” — and that LTE is the primary connectivity technology and likely will be for the foreseeable future. However, he did note that due to the long life automotive life cycle, automotive manufacturers are interested in exploring 5G, next-generation cellular technology sooner rather than later, even though deployments are just beginning.
As more and more types of transportation become connected and seek to use wireless technologies to support features such as automated operation, Stewart also said that there is the potential for new synergies when it comes to infrastructure siting.
He said that AT&T and the other national operators have been deploying “many thousands of scores” of small cells to support LTE and future 5G networks, and that as the transportation industry looks at the logistics of deploying roadside units on a regional or national scale for vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, it may be possible to combine small cells with those roadside units to share the cost and reduce duplicative infrastructure, and reduce the complexity of rights-of-way access to speed deployment. Stewart gave an example of an intersection in Atlanta, Georgia that he frequently drives through, where multiple carriers have deployed small cells and there is also a roadside unit equipped with radar for traffic signal timing. Those different types of infrastructure, he pointed out, have common needs and could potentially be combined so that fewer boxes would be sited.
