Mobile phone manufacturers need to improve on their products’ compatibility with car hands-free systems according to test conducted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN specialised agency that co-ordinates the ICT industry.[blockquote right=”pull-right”]Only 30 percent of the sample of mobile phones collected passed the test while the remaining 70 percent produced performance degradation that would be noticeable to drivers and conversational partners. Some of the phones caused as much as a three-fold decline in voice quality while others completely fail to acknowledge that they had been connected to a vehicle’s hands-free system. Experts say these faults can give rise to safety risks by encouraging drivers to use their phone by hand while driving. [/blockquote]
According to ITU, the event discovered that majority of the phones tested would cause shortfalls in the audio quality of hands-free-supported conversations, a concern that automobile manufacturers say could be resolved through greater co-operation from phone manufacturers.
Major car manufacturers, including Mercedes and Toyota, have therefore issued a strong call to mobile phone manufacturers to perform standardised tests on the behaviour of their products within hands-free systems and to take part in the ITU-T Study Group 12 standardization work that develops interoperability tests.
Only 30 percent of the sample of mobile phones collected passed the test while the remaining 70 percent produced performance degradation that would be noticeable to drivers and conversational partners. Some of the phones caused as much as a three-fold decline in voice quality while others completely fail to acknowledge that they had been connected to a vehicle’s hands-free system. Experts say these faults can give rise to safety risks by encouraging drivers to use their phone by hand while driving.
Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General says “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 co-operation between two converging, but quite different industries.”
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