Major car manufacturers, including Mercedes and Toyota, together with hands-free terminal (HFT) supplier Bosch, have issued a strong call to mobile phone manufacturers to perform standardised tests on the behaviour of their products within hands-free systems and to participate in the ITU-T Study Group 12 standardisation initiative that develops interoperability tests.
The test event, held at ITU Headquarters from 12-16 May and reported 13 June, analysed a representative sample of mobile phones which are capable of connecting to hands-free systems. Of the phones tested, roughly 30% passed the tests, while the remainder produced performance degradation that would be noticeable to drivers and conversational partners.
Serious faults were observed in the worst-performing phones; some causing as much as a three-fold decline in voice quality, others completely failing to acknowledge that they had been connected to a vehicle’s hands-free system. Quality degradation of this extent could give rise to safety risks as it could encourage drivers to use their phone by hand while driving.
Said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré: “The results of this interoperability test confirms the concerns of the automotive industry that hands-free use of mobiles highlights a need to improve customer satisfaction and road safety. ITU is well equipped to bring together the automotive and ICT sectors to foster cooperation between two converging, but quite different industries.”
The tests were performed by HEAD acoustics, applying the ‘Chapter 12 tests’ of Recommendations ITU-T P.1100 and P.1110, standards for narrow-band and wideband communications involving motor vehicles. The tests’ requirements were adapted and applied to real-world scenarios. The methodology and results of the tests event will feed into an ongoing process to refine the standards.
Added Frank Kettler, HEAD acoustics: “The current situation is unacceptable to the automotive industry. The ITU-T P.11x-series is our opportunity to put hands-free systems on the right track. It’s essential that we increase the visibility of the Chapter 12 tests, that we revise them to meet industry needs and that they are applied across the mobile phone industry. If we do not make inroads into solving this problem using the P.11x-series, it is difficult to see how we will ever do it.”
Auto makers say that there is little complexity to their requirements, asking only that mobile phones disable certain signal-processing functionality as they enter a vehicle’s hands-free system. The great variance in the behaviour of phones when operating within hands-free systems has resulted in auto makers dedicating a significant volume of time and money to the testing of mobile phones, producing test results that remain valid only until the new software for mobile phones or the next generation of mobile devices come to market.
The test event’s participants appealed to ITU to publish a 'white list' of the phones found to have passed the tests. ITU’s publication of the list, although planned, remains conditional upon ITU-T Study Group 12’s approval of the revised Chapter 12 tests employed by the test event.
The test event, held at ITU Headquarters from 12-16 May and reported 13 June, analysed a representative sample of mobile phones which are capable of connecting to hands-free systems. Of the phones tested, roughly 30% passed the tests, while the remainder produced performance degradation that would be noticeable to drivers and conversational partners.
Serious faults were observed in the worst-performing phones; some causing as much as a three-fold decline in voice quality, others completely failing to acknowledge that they had been connected to a vehicle’s hands-free system. Quality degradation of this extent could give rise to safety risks as it could encourage drivers to use their phone by hand while driving.
Said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré: “The results of this interoperability test confirms the concerns of the automotive industry that hands-free use of mobiles highlights a need to improve customer satisfaction and road safety. ITU is well equipped to bring together the automotive and ICT sectors to foster cooperation between two converging, but quite different industries.”
The tests were performed by HEAD acoustics, applying the ‘Chapter 12 tests’ of Recommendations ITU-T P.1100 and P.1110, standards for narrow-band and wideband communications involving motor vehicles. The tests’ requirements were adapted and applied to real-world scenarios. The methodology and results of the tests event will feed into an ongoing process to refine the standards.
Added Frank Kettler, HEAD acoustics: “The current situation is unacceptable to the automotive industry. The ITU-T P.11x-series is our opportunity to put hands-free systems on the right track. It’s essential that we increase the visibility of the Chapter 12 tests, that we revise them to meet industry needs and that they are applied across the mobile phone industry. If we do not make inroads into solving this problem using the P.11x-series, it is difficult to see how we will ever do it.”
Auto makers say that there is little complexity to their requirements, asking only that mobile phones disable certain signal-processing functionality as they enter a vehicle’s hands-free system. The great variance in the behaviour of phones when operating within hands-free systems has resulted in auto makers dedicating a significant volume of time and money to the testing of mobile phones, producing test results that remain valid only until the new software for mobile phones or the next generation of mobile devices come to market.
The test event’s participants appealed to ITU to publish a 'white list' of the phones found to have passed the tests. ITU’s publication of the list, although planned, remains conditional upon ITU-T Study Group 12’s approval of the revised Chapter 12 tests employed by the test event.
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