Everyone likes to think of themselves as ‘connected’ these days, but what does it mean if you drive a ‘connected car’? If you don’t know you’d better learn, because they’re coming sooner rather than later.
According to industry site Auto Connected Car News, a Connected Car refers to “the presence of devices in an automobile that connect the devices to other devices within the car/vehicles and or devices, networks and services outside the car.” Sort of like being a connected person, but in this case it’s the vehicle, or car, that carries all the technology. Typically, cars made after 2010 or thereabouts already have a heads-up unit, an infotainment unit, and an in-dash system with a screen from which the operations of the connections can be seen or managed by the driver.
Now Summit Tech has taken the technology even further with the introduction of the first Voice over LTE (VoLTE)/Rich Communication Services (RCS)-capable Connected Car, in collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), at Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
According to a statement from Summit Tech, “The best part of it is that when connected to Jack in the Box (News - Alert) or Taco Bell, the store associates don’t sound like they are in a garbage can, while the drivers can see an invoice with order details that appears on the screen and pay for the meal.”
Summit Tech also notes that VoLTE’s high-definition voice and rich communications can now be easily extended to the connected car. Among the features of the Summit Tech VoLTE car are the availability of multi-lines and multi-users; VoWi-Fi; location sharing; gesture control; heads-up display video sharing, and more.
The new system works with the Heads-Up Display systems in cars, so that users can view their calls, messages or data while keeping their eyes on the road and manage them using gesture control. With Alcatel-Lucent’s IMS solution that supports mobile and Wi-Fi, car occupants have support for VoLTE, video communications, IP messaging/chat and social presence.
The Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) show runs through Thursday, March 5.
Edited by Maurice Nagle