 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where we're here for the Future Network's cast symposium being held at ITU today and I'm joined in the studio by Michael Sena who is the editor of the dispatcher. Michael, welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Now let's talk a little bit about a lot of big discussions and conversations going on here at the symposium. What have been the major themes of discussion at this year's symposium and is there perhaps a topic that stands out as this year's hottest topic? Yes well the topics are very similar to the topics that we've had for the last few years and the reason that we've continued to have topics such as AI, cybersecurity, legislation, policies is because those continue to be very important topics for everyone involved for the telecommunications, for the vehicle manufacturers, and for everyone involved in regulatory issues. Is there a particular one that's that's it comes to the fore? Well as as the moderator for the session on cybersecurity I have to say that that was a very important and continues to be a very important topic for many many reasons because I think we all understand that if we're not secure in our communications from the vehicles if we don't allow the information that's necessary to be used for further automation of our driving we're not going to use it we're not going to be we're not going to feel safe we're not going to feel secure and the fact is that we won't be. Most people think about cybersecurity when they're thinking about cybersecurity they're thinking about their computers at home or their laptops or their phones so let's talk I'd like to expand a little bit on this so let's talk about a little bit about cybersecurity what should we be thinking about in the latest cars? The main problems that we have when when it comes to cybersecurity versus in in our phones and in our PCs people who are attacking our telecommunications devices, enable devices are doing it primarily to make money I mean their thieves they want something and they'll they'll do it one way or the other either they'll they'll put something in your your computers so that you can't use it in order before that you pay them I think it's going to be difficult to attack that same problem and do it in the same way with vehicles with vehicles we have a much more difficult problem mobile phones are in our hand PCs are normally on our laptop or on a desk but with vehicles we have many more issues to address primarily from the standpoint of safety cars can be hijacked in order to earn money but something else can happen when that's that's occurring that creates an unsafe situation for the driver and people around I mean we can start driving cars without drivers into lots of people and many people can be injured so I don't think it's the same issue of being paid money it could be terrorists primarily terrorist attacks or individuals who are are acting as as terrorists not political terrorists but as as terrorists from a from another standpoint if you were a consumer if you were sitting at home you could perhaps take steps against this of course if you're driving a car it's it's a it's a different story how can consumers protect themselves mitigate themselves against these circumstances if if the vehicle has been designed in such a way that it's open to attack that someone can take control of that vehicle there's nothing you can do as a driver you have absolutely no control of what's going on internally in a vehicle that's a very different situation than you can't pull the plug out if you're driving the car even if you turn the key off the car is still moving if someone has taken control of the car you have absolutely nothing to do with it so it's a it's a very different situation that's why we're taking such long such a long time in great care before we turn over any of the driving tasks to a non-human so is it you you're any ce are they contributing to this this conversation tell us a little bit about the steps that have been taken it's immense before I began working with with the ITU which was in 2015 I produced a report on over the year updates requirements functional and operational requirements I had been working around the issues of telecommunications with with e-call b-call those sorts of things since 1997 but the whole issue of cyber security had not been part of it in the in the same way because our communications I was working with with Volvo at the time our communications were were secure one to one there was no involvement of the internet there was no it was a it was a it was a data packet going over sms and everything that we did was extremely secure but as as the years went on and we became more and more dependent on on IP on internet internet communications cyber security became much more important and then when we began to think about the whole idea of over-the-air updating it became even more important once you once you allow the vehicle to be communicated with in many different situations you have to be much more concerned with with over-the-air with cyber security and at that time the ITU is almost alone in developing the the standards I mean the the the work the wp-29 and the sg-17 these groups are doing an enormous amount of work and and now finally the the standards are published it's fantastic in your work with the automotive industry what is the challenge brought most often in discussions around intelligent transport and innovation you know it's it's it's almost like what what's you know what what did they say in the newspaper yesterday I watched the industry very very closely and five years ago there wasn't a single CEO of a company that was really seriously talking about electrification except for Elon musk and everyone thought that it was he was a crack and that there was no one you know no one it was going to be developing cars Sergio Marchione a few years ago a few years before he died said please don't buy my electric cars they cost me more money to sell them to you than than you pay me to own one so but suddenly electrification is on everybody's and everyone's thoughts and in their minds communications the if you if you mentioned communications to a CEO it's it's almost as if they're they don't really want to talk about it because because connected cars have never sold cars they've never you know it's not something that you you walk into a to a place to buy a dealer say you know I want the most connected car it's on the list it's something to think about but it's it's the cost it's the space that you get it's the you know it's what you can afford the best car you can afford for the money the size the quality and so on and then the image that you you don't you don't walk into a BMW dealer if you can't afford a BMW or somehow you can manage to pay the monthly rents on a lease so the things that we think about the things that we're working on are really not they're not top of the list for the folks who are running these companies they look at how am i going to sell the most cars what's going to what am i going to be able to put in my cars that makes them sell and now because everything is is the governments have gotten behind it good or not i'm not a big fan of electrification for many reasons not the least of which is that we we don't save that much energy and pollute less with it with electric cars but now because there's so much so many thoughts and so many regulations and we have plus and minus and so on from for insurance people are now talking about electric cars um when we get to the point of cars actually being able to do more than they can do as far as self-driving the car companies will begin to put more thought into it they're putting money into it they're actually putting a lot of money but a couple of years ago it was much more on the top of the list now it's much more on the sort of middle to bottom of the list it's not it's not the highest priority anymore because it's gotten too hard they realize that it's not going to happen tomorrow and we're not going to sell cars because of it because of regulation because well because it doesn't work yet i mean it doesn't the the self-driving cars are not self-driving and even if elan mosque thinks he's selling cars because of that he's selling cars because especially in norway because people can't afford to buy anything else they get so many rebates and so many so many kickbacks that think you know they can't afford not to buy a tesla and what about the future of mobility what are your predictions for the future of mobility and and how are regulators thinking about it how are industry players thinking about it and what should we expect as consumers um not everybody lives in san francisco not everybody lives in the middle of london i've never lived in san francisco but i did live in the middle of london um i have an apartment we have an apartment in in uh stalcom we don't live there full time but we do get an opportunity to spend time in the in the middle the real middle of the largest city in sweden um or even Scandinavia it's a very different proposition than living in a small city a small town 80 kilometers west of of uh stalcom or living in a small village in the north of of uh sweden even in our conference today there wasn't any mention of the fact that in a place like a country like the united states where 50 percent of the people live in two on two coasts and with a little dot in the middle of in chicago but the rest of the folks live on 90 percent of the land in the rest of the country those 50 percent of the people aren't riding scooters they're not riding bicycles to the supermarket they're driving cars so the the issue that car companies have today and it's the issue that transportation people have if you're dealing with transportation in the entire country how do you manage to provide the mobility to all the people in different situations not just to all the people living in the center of stalcom not to mention the fact that that stalcom people think of stalcom as urbanizing it actually isn't it's beginning it's getting better bigger people are moving into the stalcom region but they're not moving into the center center of stalcom this the same is true of most cities we have to to accommodate people being able to move from all parts and all different types of densities within a region and right now we're not addressing that to the to the extent that I feel we need to now you've taken the time to be here at this symposium it was originally going to be at the the Geneva car show but we know for the reasons of health that was cancelled here in Switzerland but I wanted to ask you what's the value of this symposium to you and to the wider intelligent transport community I tell the readers of my newsletter the dispatcher that if there's one conference that they should attend if they're if they're in the transport business if they're in the telecommunications business related to transport if there's one conference that they should attend it's this one because unlike many of the other conferences many of them are are much larger they have exhibitions they have a lot of people standing up talking about what their company is doing this is devoted to the principal issues that we're all addressing and everyone gets to hear everything at the same time there's participation if you've got a question and you can ask you can ask it during the session or you can ask it during a break or the lunch break or you sit down with all the people who were there now we have approximately 50 people in the audience today because people you know haven't been able to come not all the moderators and not all of the the panelists have been able to to travel to Geneva either or joining remotely and but joining remotely and that's that was fantastic that's absolutely great but when you come to this this event you're able to talk with anyone anytime and that's that's a major benefit and it doesn't matter who it is whether it's person coming from the commission or from a car company you with the number of people that you have all together for an entire day from nine o'clock until seven or eight o'clock this evening you have the full availability of them and that's a fantastic opportunity. Michael Senna editor of the Dispatcher thank you very much for making yourself available to us here in the ITU studio and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at some stage in the near future and and you can share some more valuable insights with us my pleasure thank you thank you