5GAA: Driving the Future of Connected Mobility

Please could you tell us a bit about the 5G Automotive Association’s mission & works and key stakeholders, as well as your role?

At 5GAA, our mission is to bring together the automotive and telecommunications industries to develop end-to-end solutions for safer, smarter and more sustainable mobility. As of mid-2025, 5GAA is representing over 115 industry players —including major global car manufacturers, mobile network operators, infrastructure vendors, Tier 1 suppliers and technology providers for the automotive industry. We work across technology, policy, and standards to bring connected vehicles (cellular vehicle-to-everything) to deployment at global level. As CTO, my role is to coordinate our technical activities, facilitate collaboration among members, and help translate innovation into real-world applications, while maintaining alignment with international standards and regulatory frameworks.

How do you envision non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) complementing terrestrial 5G networks for automotive applications, and what are the missing pieces from making this a reality?

NTNs can play a key role in complementing terrestrial networks, especially in remote or underserved areas where connectivity is patchy or unavailable. In our vision, embedded in our latest roadmap published in November 2024 and our Technical Report on NTN, NTNs will initially support narrowband, low-data-rate use cases such as third-party emergency or breakdown calls, as well as traffic management in disaster or remote scenarios. In the longer run, we see NTN providing broadband data connectivity for additional use cases, such as HD live video streaming, data collection and sharing for HD maps, and teleoperated driving support. However, challenges remain—particularly around ensuring a seamless switch between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks. We’re working closely with members to demonstrate real-world use cases to help close these gaps.

As network slicing is starting to mature, what is 5GAA’s perspective on dedicated automotive slices and what are the requirements?

Network slicing holds strong potential to enable tailored connectivity for automotive use cases, offering Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees across key KPIs such as coverage, throughput, and latency-critical for ensuring high reliability and predictable performance. However, making slicing work at scale for vehicles will require close coordination and commercial agreements between network operators and OEMs.

4) What are the biggest challenges automakers are facing when integrating vehicle-to-everything (V2X) solutions and working with the telecom provider industry? One key challenge is the difference in development cycles - the automotive lifecycle is much longer, with cars and embedded hardware that can remain in the field for decades, while telecom infrastructure and standards update much faster. Bridging technology roadmaps taking into account the respective business constraints of each sector is complex. Automakers also face uncertainty due to a lack of regulatory harmonisation with technology choices, standards or spectrum allocation depending on regions/countries, which complicate the global rollout and scaling of V2X solutions. 5GAA plays a bridging role to support global alignment and bring clarity to deployment roadmaps across both industries.

What is 5GAA's vision for the transition from 5G to 6G in automotive applications?

5GAA envisions a smooth and evolutionary transition from 5G to 6G in the automotive sector—one that ensures continuity, enhances existing capabilities, and supports new services without disrupting long vehicle development cycles. Our roadmap extends to 2032 and is closely aligned with the 3GPP technology evolution from 5G to 5G-Advanced and beyond. Core 5G features like low latency, high reliability, and positioning will remain vital for connected vehicles and should be enhanced in 6G. Evolving NR Sidelink for direct V2X and advancing NTN are key to ensuring resilient, seamless, and cost-effective connectivity. Looking forward, 6G should also support key emerging requirements: immersive in-vehicle experiences, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), sustainable system design, trusted communications, and distributed AI-driven services.

You will be contributing as a speaker at Network X this year. What are you most interested in discussing with the attendees?

I look forward to sharing recent progress from the 5GAA community on NTN integration and NTN-powered connected mobility use cases. But more importantly, I’m interested in hearing from my fellow speakers about how our industries can align to accelerate adoption of NTN-powered solutions. Collaborations across verticals are key to unlocking the full potential of connected mobility, and events like Network X are an ideal platform to exchange ideas and shape the path forward.