One doesn’t expect to get emotional at the kickoff keynote for an industry event, but Radiodays Europe 22 flipped the script with live music and a bulletin from Ukrainian broadcasters beamed in from a bunker in Ukraine. The bunker broadcast followed speeches from Swedish and Finnish broadcasting executives including … Read More
Author: Roger C. Lanctot
Radiodays Europe: Emotional Keynote
Taxis Don’t Have a Prayer
Ever since the emergence of Uber and DiDi and Gett and Yandex and all the rest of the app-based ride hailing operators I have been worried about taxis. I had a sneaking suspicion that the ride hail operators were exploiting a loophole that put taxis at a disadvantage creating a mortal threat.
My suspicions were borne out by taxi driver… Read More
The Jig is Up for Car Data Brokers
The same week that John Oliver took on the topic of privacy on his HBO program “Last Week Tonight,” one of the leading automotive data brokers – Otonomo – became the target of a class action lawsuit in California. While Oliver detailed the creepiness of everyday privacy violations on computers, mobile phones, and connected televisions,… Read More
ITSA – Not So Intelligent Transportation
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed last year in the U.S. earmarks billions of dollars that can be used for the deployment of potentially life-saving C-V2X car connectivity technology. The U.S. Department of Transportation and state DOTs are poised to commence that spending, but one thing stands in the … Read More
OnStar: Getting Connectivity Wrong
One of my pet beefs with the car industry is that car makers, on the whole, have failed to agree among themselves as to what basic vehicle connectivity ought to consist of. From car maker to car maker prices vary, bundles vary, free periods of service access vary and the variations get worse between model years as offers change and … Read More
Tesla: Canary in the Coal Mine
The automotive industry is tied up in knots over cybersecurity. Consumers expect their cars to be secure. Car makers spend millions on securing cars, but don’t know how, what, or if to charge consumers for security.
Meanwhile, most cyber penetration reports to organizations such as the Auto-ISAC are related to enterprise attacks. … Read More
Chip Shortage Killed the Radio in the Car
“In my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind we’ve gone too far.” – “Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles
I discovered within days of driving home my new BMW X3 last fall that I was a victim of the much ballyhooed chip shortage. Among the features “deleted” from … Read More
A Blanche DuBois Approach Won’t Resolve Traffic Trouble
Near the end of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” the Blanche DuBois character, who has suffered a mental breakdown following an implied rape, tells the doctor and matron who have come to take her to the hospital: “Whoever you are – I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Sadly, this is the… Read More
Auto Safety – A Dickensian Tale
As I prepare to join the International Telecommunications Union’s Future Networked Car Symposium – today through Friday – I am reminded of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” and its unforgettable opening paragraph – modified for a modern context here:
It was the best of times,… Read More
No Traffic at the Crossroads
The Federal Highway Administration in the U.S. tells us that “each year roughly one–quarter of all traffic fatalities and about one–half of all traffic injuries in the United States are attributed to intersections.” Intersections are clearly a challenge for human drivers, and the dirty little automotive industry secret is… Read More
Intel to present Intel 4 process at the VLSI Technology Symposium