Prepare to pay more for car updates with 3G sunsetting
3G ending is a nightmare for car owners who hate over-the-air subscriptions
You may own your car, but you don’t own its functionality
We may have purchased the car outright, but OTA updates and a subscription model mean we’re still at the behest of the services and updates that the company chooses to share with us. We own the car, but the company owns the software.
And we really should have learned from the pain of smart homes. IoT-connected homes have a graveyard of failures. A company goes bust or is acquired. It stops supporting older devices or updating the device’s software. A security problem forces the device out of operation. Orlegislation is passedthat updates the law (as in the state of Massachusetts, for example) regarding the right to repair your own devices.Or technology standards evolve faster than the IoT device.
Long term, the goal of car makers is to eliminate privately owned vehicles. Instead, we’ll pay for a subscription service for autonomous vehicles to pick us up and drive us where we need to go.
But until then, I have many questions about how OTAs will play out:
Pissed off by OTA updates? Wait until you have to deal with 3G sunsetting!
While many of our smartphones are embedded with 5G, you might not know that most cars still run on old-school 3G cellular networks. This will become a big problem in 2022 as telcos are moving on from 3G.
AT&Tis ending its 3G services in February,Sprintin March, and T-Mobile in July.Verizon’sgiving you until December.
What does the end of 3G mean for the average consumer?
It’s going to affectALOT of cars.
A lot of software runs on 3G in cars, including WiFi hotspots, smartphone app connectivity, voice assistants, in-nav traffic and location data,hands-free calling, emergency call, and remote lock/unlock functions.
Once telcos close down 3G, these features will no longer be available — unless the automakers upgrade.
And for some customers, it will come at a price.
For example,Tesla’soffering a modest fee of $200.Stellantis, home to brands like Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, andOpel, will offer a subscription of appropriate hardware in 2GB of data per month at $9.99, or unlimited data for $29.99 per month.
Overall,Stellantis is betting big on OTA updates, predicting annual revenue of approximately $4.5 billion in annual revenues by 2026 and $22.5 billion by 2030, generated by software-enabled product offerings and subscriptions.
Toyota isdiscontinuing Connected Services supportfor vehicle models made in 2019 or earlier. Perhaps in response to the customer complaints about the keyfob, theytoldThe Drive they have also “enhanced” vehicles built before Nov. 12, 2018, to no longer require a subscription for the key fob’s remote start feature to function.
Yep, there’s proof that car makers can turn functionalities on and off at will.
We can expect the next year to get messy as car owners struggle to keep up with their right to access their current software and how and what will be available after 4G kicks in.
I suspect there will be many unhappy customers, and a lot of companies lining their pockets with money from subscriptions.
Story byCate Lawrence
Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. She focuses on all things mobility: ebikes, autonomous vehicles, VTOL, smart ci(show all)Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. She focuses on all things mobility: ebikes, autonomous vehicles, VTOL, smart cities, and the future of alternative energy sources like electric batteries, solar, and hydrogen.
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