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Telefónica, EHang Collaborate to Boost UAM in Europe and Latin America

Tele­fóni­ca Tech (TT) announced this week a col­lab­o­ra­tion with EHang to boost Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) in Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, reports a press release.

This is a huge deal for EHang as it offers the Chi­nese com­pa­ny not only a part­ner­ship with one of the largest phone and mobile net­work providers in the world, but an open­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly enter oth­er regions out­side of Chi­na and Asia to deploy its smart aer­i­al autonomous solu­tions and dri­ve the Low-Alti­tude Econ­o­my. For an autonomous air­craft needs a com­pa­ny of TT stature to expand around the globe using 5 and a lit­tle lat­er 6G.

The release says, “Both com­pa­nies intend to imple­ment use cas­es in Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca around Air Mobil­i­ty, Smart City Man­age­ment and Aer­i­al Media solu­tions in areas as diverse as pas­sen­ger trans­port, logis­tics, health ser­vices, emer­gency response and Smart Cities man­age­ment. Tele­fóni­ca and EHang will also col­lab­o­rate on ‘Drone Light Shows’ with swarms of drones to dig­i­talise and increase the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of large-scale shows and events.”

Vic­to­ria Jing Xiang, EHang’s COO for Europe and Latam, com­ment­ed, “Tele­fóni­ca Tech’s capa­bil­i­ties and exper­tise in con­nec­tiv­i­ty and the inter­net of things (IoT) will enable EHang to deploy its solu­tions effi­cient­ly and secure­ly, allow­ing mil­lions of peo­ple to ben­e­fit from its appli­ca­tions in their dai­ly lives”.

EHang 216‑S UAV Fly­ing in Spain (Cred­it: Oronbb, CC BY-SA 4.0)

It can­not be empha­sised how impor­tant con­nec­tiv­i­ty is, as it plays an inte­gral role in the devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion of UAM. 5G mobile net­works, for exam­ple, have the capac­i­ty “to guar­an­tee reli­able com­mu­ni­ca­tions, low laten­cy and high data trans­mis­sion capac­i­ty,” con­tin­ues the release. “These char­ac­ter­is­tics make it pos­si­ble to opti­mise the real-time con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing of air­craft by send­ing teleme­try or mul­ti­me­dia data to both ground con­trol sys­tems and cen­tralised pub­lic infor­ma­tion sys­tems for imme­di­ate pro­cess­ing and man­age­ment. 

“Sim­i­lar­ly, 5G helps to ensure the con­ti­nu­ity of UAV oper­a­tion by pre­vent­ing poten­tial inter­fer­ence and pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty through the encryp­tion of SIM cards in UAVs.”

The lev­el of pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty of the infor­ma­tion obtained by the drone is also enhanced to pre­vent data traf­fic being shared out­side the customer’s premis­es. It can pro­vide cov­er­age too in iso­lat­ed and remote areas. Mean­while, both com­pa­nies rely on TT TheThinX lab­o­ra­to­ry, con­sid­ered one of the most advanced and best equipped IoT envi­ron­ments in the world.

Alfre­do Ser­ret, Glob­al Head of IoT at Tele­fóni­ca Tech, remarked, “The fact that EHang relies on our con­nec­tiv­i­ty to devel­op the sec­tor in Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca con­firms the strong posi­tion­ing of our ser­vice in both mar­kets, and means com­bin­ing capa­bil­i­ties to enable con­nect­ed, safe, effi­cient and green air mobil­i­ty for all.”

As part of the new part­ner­ship both com­pa­nies will attend the Mobile World Con­gress event in Barcelona on Feb­ru­ary 26th. They will share Telefónica’s stand (Hall 3, Stand 3K31) as well as give a talk on their new col­lab­o­ra­tion between 2.30pm and 3pm.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://telefonicatech.com/

https://www.ehang.com/

(Top image: Alfred Ser­ret and Vic­to­ria Jing Xiang) 

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