HAAS Alert, a company that seeks to make roads safer for emergency vehicles, has finished what Sprint characterizes as a “promising” vehicle-to-everything pilot using the Sprint 5G network in Chicago.
The pilots used fleet cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) on the carrier’s 5G network in Chicago. Sprint says that it logged a 40% faster transmission time for alerts due to increased speed and lower latency. Variance was 72% lower on 5G than on the LTE network.
The test featured a vehicle with a device that contained both 5G and LTE chipsets. It measured the difference between when a device alerted the HAAS Alert’s Safety Cloud platform and when the Safety Cloud received the alert and the reciprocal signal, Sprint said.
“The first LTE control test took 0.796 seconds on average to transmit from the device with a standard deviation of 0.388; using 5G, the transmission took 0.549 seconds on average with a standard deviation of 0.107,” according to the press release.
In a second set of tests, “[T]he LTE control took an average of 0.387 seconds with a standard deviation of 0.388, compared to 0.232 seconds with a deviation of 0.082 for 5G. These results demonstrated a 40 percent reduction of time as well as a 40 percent reduction in variance.”
The goal is to prevent accidents. Cory Hohs, CEO of HAAS Alert, said in a press release that 2019 “is one of the deadliest years on record for first responders and roadway workers, and we’re committed to doing our part to solve this problem. Our recent tests with Sprint confirm that 5G networks will make communities and first responders safer, and we look forward to offering 5G compatibility to the departments and fleets we serve nationwide.”
The press release positions the initiative as an example of the public safety benefits of 5G.
The highest profile initiative aimed at increasing carrier involvement in public safety is FirstNet, which is being led by AT&T and the First Responder Network Authority. Last month, FirstNet said that almost 9,000 public safety agencies and organizations have subscribed. These entities account for more than 750,000 connections.
