Audi A5 Sportback. Image: Ivan Kurmyshov/Shutterstock
Irish IoT player Cubic Telecom has clocked up some serious connected car mileage with Microsoft as a key partner.
At Mobile World Congress 2018, Cubic Telecom said that it has technically enabled more than 1m connected cars on its platform in the past 15 months.
The company said that cars are connecting every day in more than 35 countries across 40 mobile networks.
‘Cubic is not here to replace the role of the mobile network operator, rather, integrating our technology into their core architecture has ensured we are the trusted enabler to connect the car on to any network globally’
– BARRY NAPIER
It counts original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Volkswagen among its blue-chip customers.
Motoring with Microsoft
“Cubic has become the lead enabler for automotive OEMs. Reaching more than 1m cars is a huge milestone for the team at Cubic Telecom,” said CEO Barry Napier.
“In January, with Qualcomm, we announced a solution designed to support automakers with over-the-air feature updates and applications to help drive connected vehicle services worldwide. Scaling for growth is the company’s key focus.
“Cubic is not here to replace the role of the mobile network operator, rather, integrating our technology into their core architecture has ensured we are the trusted enabler to connect the car on to any network globally. We provide our partners with a secure architecture that meets local requirements and regulatory compliance for global deployment, and that is why we chose Azure as our cloud foundation. As Microsoft has become the market leader in this space, it’s the natural choice for Cubic.”
Cubic Telecom has designed software that is preloaded at the manufacturing stage, which is necessary for a car to simply connect to any secure, high-speed LTE network once the car has been delivered to the customer.
The company works closely with car manufacturers to enable key services and local content via split billing and location-based usage. Using the Microsoft Azure cloud, Cubic Telecom provides the car OEMs with the flexibility to add content services efficiently and to securely scale the connected car programme to its global fleet.
“Hitting 1m connected vehicles is an important milestone and a critical benchmark for the fast-growing, connected car market,” said Kevin Dallas, corporate vice-president of IoT and intelligent cloud business development at Microsoft.
“We’re proud Cubic has bet on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to enable and improve services for auto manufacturers and its vehicles, such as health checks, engineering programme cost-cutting and being able to share reporting in real time across some of the world’s leading mobile networks and technology players. This demonstrates our combined commitment to enhancing driver’s experiences with connected-vehicle technology innovations.”
Investment boost
Cubic Telecom said in January at CES that it is working on exploiting the application processing and wireless capabilities of Qualcomm Snapdragon automotive modems.
Last August, Cubic Telecom closed a €40m Series C round, bringing its total investment up to €75m. The round was supported by existing investors Qualcomm and Audi Electronic Ventures, as well as new participants Valid Soluciones Tecnológicas and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
As part of the new investment, Cubic Telecom said that the hiring of 60 new roles, announced in October 2016, will be accelerated, with expectations that they will be filled over the course of 12 months.
Audi A5 Sportback. Image: Ivan Kurmyshov/Shutterstock
