Reinventing the seas with connectivity: Boating industry revolution

Explore how digital transformation is making waves in the maritime and boating industry! Join thought leaders Barbara Pareglio from GSMA, Andrew Cullen of Yamaha Motor Corporation, Björn Qvarsell from KDDI Spherience and our host Jim Morrish from Transforma Insights as they dive into connected boats, smart sensors, AI-driven maintenance, and the growing role of cellular connectivity on the water. Learn how these innovations are making boat ownership safer, simpler, and more enjoyable. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, marine professional, or just love spending time on the water. Don’t miss practical insights, future trends, and the real business impact of next-gen marine technologies!

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Transcript

Jim Morrish: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to this Trending Tech podcast, which is the second edition of the GSMA Smart Mobility Podcast series. And thank you for joining us to all of you around the world who are listening in. My name's Jim Morrish, co-founder of Transforma Insights, a firm of industry analysts focused on all things related to digital transformation, and for this episode of the podcast, I am joined by Barbara Paregilo, who is Senior Technical Director and Smart Mobility lead for the GSM Association.

Barbara Pareglio: Thank you for having me again. Looking forward to this second episode.

Jim Morrish: Great. And I'm also joined by Andrew Cullen, who is Director of Marine Connectivity at Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA.

Andrew Cullen: Hey Jim. Nice to be here.

Jim Morrish: Excellent, and also Björn Qvarsell, who is head of product portfolio for KDDI  Spherience.  

Björn Qvarsell: Thanks for having me, Jim.

Jim Morrish: Excellent, and as I mentioned earlier, this is the second in a series of podcasts in association with the GSM [00:01:00] Association, in which we explore digital transformation with a focus on cellular technologies. Our first episode focused on airports, but today we're focusing on boating. So a nice transition from things that you have to do, to things that you want to do.

 So in this context, we are talking about the integration of smart sensors, connected devices and communication technologies in marine or particularly boating settings to monitor and manage boats, both while in use and particularly when not in use. and those times when a boat is not in use are key considerations for the boating industry since boats spend a lot of time not being used and often located some distance from their owners. These are valuable assets, uh, which can be left unattended sometimes for periods of months without some form of remote monitoring technology. You know, how can a boat owner be sure of the condition of their boats well, and unless they have a crew permanently stationed aboard.

 But more usually and more normally, I'd expect, mooring services may monitor the external condition of a boat, but would they be able to tell you, for [00:02:00] instance, that a battery is flat? So, Barbara, Andrew,  Björn, welcome to the podcast. here. It's great to have you as guests.

Before we dive in, as we say, to the detail of boating technology, let's take a quick look at some some of the serious tech news stories that our guests have spotted, and we'll circle back with some lighter news stories in our 'What the tech?' segment at the end of the podcast. Barbara, what's the serious tech news story that you've found for us?

Barbara Pareglio: Um, thank you for the question. So I'm going a little bit in a different directions, but this time I wanted to highlight one report with GSMA Intelligence publish actually for MWC in March. Uh, the report is talking about the readiness of different countries in supporting drones operations and the importance of the regulatory framework, but particularly on the spectrum. So it's just to highlight the importance of having a framework that helps the innovation and also the scalability and how [00:03:00] the importance of the spectrum is. I know it's not related to this way, but there similarity of thinking how we can help new industry in having connected solution.

Jim Morrish: Okay and what were a couple of the key findings of that report? to, Just to highlight them.

Barbara Pareglio: Yeah, the key find is to, to give an example, we highlighted, we looked at the 13 countries globally and we looked at the, some of the countries that they were already having, you know, more operational drones and the readiness of the country are highlighting, uh, uh, UK. Italy as an example. Also, I mean, we didn't look at China, but also China as quite an advanced framework.

And the point is that they also made a decision on which pattern to use and how to use it. So the conversation is at least going to the next level in order to have commercial solutions and will more scale. So those are some of the highlights that I wanted to say.

Having A regular framework that is clear on the message. What you do is very important. Having a spectrum [00:04:00] allocated for operations for example, UK is one of the good example. You can use any, let's say most of the bands for the mobile operator, some of them are not permitted, but in majority you are free to use those bands. You just have to have a license to operate on those bands. Um, it makes it a very clear statement, for the MNOs that they can provide services, but also from the drone operator that what it can do, and that is a positive move of the industry.

Jim Morrish: Yes definitely. I spectrum is key for the operation of particularly 5G enabled drones and the regulatory environment for drones. It. Is extremely fragmented and varies a lot around the world, the, but the potential's huge. Um, for instance, you know, things like crop spraying, monitoring power lines, auditing stocks of aggregates and other assets in storage yards and building an industrial survey.

Yeah. The range of applications drone is potentially huge and the synergy 5G technology is significant. Andrew, what's the latest development that caught your eye?

Andrew Cullen: Yeah, I have one that is, kind of [00:05:00] related to readiness of an industry, as Barbara had just mentioned, but it's, uh, related to an internal study that we just received. And it's about the education and understanding around connected boats and connected boat technology. And, um, three years ago when we initially looked at this 83% of our boat owners and boat owners in general had indicated that they had little to no idea about what connected boat technology meant. And we just completed another survey just a few months ago and we actually saw that flip. Ironically, it's the same number, 83%, but that same, that 83% now said that they have somewhat familiarity with connected boat technology.

So we've been really active on the education front over the last three years. We've been pushing out a lot of the messages and a lot of the technology and we've been getting it on boats so people are actually using it. So it's really neat to see that the industry is beginning to get ready for this technology to become mainstream.

Jim Morrish: Yeah Yeah it's amazing how quickly public awareness can shift, particularly in this [00:06:00] context. Is there a specific event or development that drove that shift? Do you think, or is it kind of an overspill from people's awareness, for instance, of connected cars? Or is it more from within the boating ecosystem than awareness of.

Andrew Cullen: Probably a little bit of all of that really. I think, you know, the, I think that. People got more familiar with connected vehicles, certainly over the last three to five years. I think at the same time as we've been pushing this out, we've been educating our boat builders. We've been educating our dealers, and we've been educating our customers about connected boat technology.

Now it's out there. We think it's great. Hopefully the customers think it's great and they're talking about it, and word of mouth is hopefully helping spread that as well.

Jim Morrish: Right. It's certainly a significant shift, so thank you for that. And with that we should proceed with the main discussion, I guess for today. Um, about how digital transformation and cellular technologies in particular, are enabling a better boating experience. So if we focus first what's happening today's market, Andrew, I'll start with you.

We've seen major transformations. I mean, we discussed the automotive industry and also you've highlighted that shift in [00:07:00] awareness of connected boating, and that concept is growing. Um, how is transformative technology impacting the boating industry? You know, as of today.

Andrew Cullen: Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of the, you know, as we were just talking about connected vehicles, they're looking at electrification and autonomy and AI and software defined vehicles. We like to refer to boats as a software defined marine vessel, and so what we're seeing is a lot of the same concepts, a lot of the same principles that have been adopted in other industries that are starting to come toward the marine industry. Some of them are further along than others in the development. But we're really trying to proliferate that technology. We're big believers in the impact that it can have, not only on our customers, but across the entire marine ecosystem, which includes boat builders and our dealers, um, to be able to use connected data to do things that they've never been able to do before.

And overall to create a customer experience that has really never been seen before on the water. I would say that there's quite a few differences between land and water when we look at connected technologies, as you [00:08:00] mentioned earlier in the podcast that boats are often stored away from owners. It's not in a garage. It's not around dedicated wifi. It's in harsh conditions. You know, boat owners can be a plane ride or a long car ride away from those boats, and when they get there, they want to use the boat for the intended purpose, and we want to help them do that. So being able to make sure that nothing happened to the boat, knowing where it is, knowing that it didn't break a geofence, knowing the battery levels are good to go, that no sensors showed any type of alarm or any type of issues is really critical in this kind of an application. And, you know, we're seeing also the importance of remote updates for these boats as well. So for boat builders and for dealers, being able to change that boat after it shifts so that we can update the technology, we can add new features and we can create a better boating experience for our customers on the water as well.

Jim Morrish: Okay. Thank you and that's very much what's happening in the market today. And just be clear you have a kind of a proposition which does many of those things, don't you?

Andrew Cullen: Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Morrish: Excellent, [00:09:00] and when did that come to market? How long has that been in market and what, what are you seeing in the uptake of that?

Andrew Cullen: Yeah. So, you know, about three years ago when we mentioned when I mentioned earlier about the lack of knowledge around connected boats, uh, Yamaha purchased a company called Siren Marine, and Siren Marine was the foremost leader in connected boat technology. And what we've been doing over the last three years is integrating that company and that technology into the Yamaha ecosystem and infrastructure. So really was able to accelerate our adoption of connected technologies and get it out to our builders and dealers faster. And so really it centers around a customer experience that is remote monitoring, being able to look at different sensors on the boat and being alerted on a mobile app when something does happen to it. Tracking technologies for geofences and positioning also control features, being able to turn things on and off remotely from the boat, whether that's an HVAC system or some sort of a digital switch, or a light or a refrigerator, anything along those lines. And then a big one for us is also the realtime or runtime maintenance based [00:10:00] app notifications. So, without connected technology on an engine monitoring the runtime, there's really no way to determine for a boat when it's due for maintenance, because given different climates, hot and cold areas, boats can be run very differently and have very different maintenance requirements.

So connected technology allows us to communicate that back to our customers and also back to our dealers so they can take good care of those customers as well.

Jim Morrish: I mean, that sounds like a pretty comprehensive and, well-rounded out proposition and quite complex, and I guess at that point I should bring in Björn because I think experience worked with Yamaha, didn't you to, to help bring that solution to market. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Björn Qvarsell: Yeah. Yeah. We did and we are to be fair, Yamaha is a history in this industry that predates our engagement with them, but we have definitely stepped in and are working closely with Yamaha on a day-to-day basis. It's good to get to share the virtual stage with Andrew again. We did our presentation at MWC and the funny thing around that is, as [00:11:00] Andrew mentioned, the 83%, now knowing a little bit of what the connected boat actually is or means. A colleague of mine jokingly referred to our keynote at MWC as a coming out party for the connected boat right, and I think that's what we're seeing a new vertical being introduced. Not that there hasn't been any connectivity on boats every before but as a concept it's new and KDDI Spherience, it's really a connectivity center of excellence within the larger KDDI corporation, and as such we come in and support Yamaha in this, like they're the expert in the marine industry. They're expert in the whole value ecosystem around it, and then we support 'em from a connectivity point of view.

 At least that's the one thing that people would first come to mind when they think about a connectivity aggregator as KDDI, KDDI Spherience in this case, right, but I always claim that we are a connectivity aggregator with benefits, right? So within the KDDI corporation, huge, right? We're all standing behind Yamaha here but the KDDI America team and KDDI Spherience are [00:12:00] supporting Yamaha with connectivity, but not only that, right? We have an end-to-end approach. We believe that a modern connectivity aggregator needs to be able to go beyond that connectivity, which is where supporting them with a telematics platform, a TSP and surrounding system around how they engage with their users, not only manage the devices out there, either they're more at the marina or out on the open sea, whether it's a lake or the ocean. It would provide a connectivity and also the tools and systems needed to be able to know what are these users doing out there when they're using the boats, why are they using them for what purpose, how often, et cetera, and feeding that real time data back to Yamaha. So they make use of our systems to gain that knowledge about their customers to be able to provide a better boating experience.

Jim Morrish: Yeah and I believe that you've also made some kind of strategic investments to help sort of bind that partnership ecosystem together, haven't you?

Björn Qvarsell: Yeah, That is correct, Jim. Um, so [00:13:00] KDDI, that's one of the many benefits of such a large corporation and there is a strategic investment arm within KDDI that goes out and actively looks for interesting companies in the industry, and we leverage those, partnerships then in incorporating the right companies into our product portfolio.

So one of the partners that we work with is Station Digital Media based out of California and the U.S, and they're the ones that bring that understanding and that experience of the user experience and the digital technologies that it takes to really drive that and push that forward.

So yeah, we have a, a few of those active partnerships and we work closely with them every day and then they are really just like anyone else on the team, we're all as one big team supporting Yamaha here.

Jim Morrish: That that sounds ideal, but at that point I'd to come to you, Barbara, because with your focus on transport, a broader remit and from the GSMA kind of cross industry perspective, how do you think the things that we are seeing in [00:14:00] automotive and indeed in other domains are porting over and influencing the development in the boating and perhaps wider marine space?

Barbara Pareglio: Um, so yeah, so in generally speaking, when we look the the different mobility applications, there is indeed some learning some of the aspects that we see from the automotive, from the drones that we can apply to marine. So obviously as Andrew said, there are different challenges. You know, we are used to work, let's say on the ground outside where there's not a lot of coverage. Then we started to look uh, to drones in the air. Not a traditional area for the telco either, and I think it's, you know, maritime is the next challenge, and I think there is opportunity there. Uh, Particularly I would say there's area which is less considered. So the big vessels that have traditionally always connectivity, and mainly satellite, but then you have all the fishermen, all the boats that are still close to the shore, those are quite left by themselves in a lot of cases, [00:15:00] and I think it is a great opportunity to think about what we could do with connectivity and also with cellular, because maybe at that level we can provide in offering a lot of different solutions and you know, I hope that can increase the experience of the fisherman of the boat owner, recreational, but also in uh, ferries in providing safety in ports or marinas.

There's a lot of opportunity that I see uh, out there, and we can think about what we do in airports. We also look in what we can do in ports. So I think we should look at the learnings and what we could do in providing the services, particularly for the maritime. And we never had the focus before.

Mostly speaking, it was very traditional, separate, let's say, business unit also from a telco. I think we have a more opportunity to leverage the learning that different area and see what we can offer for improving and having more connected boating [00:16:00] services or maritime services.

Björn Qvarsell: Can I throw in a comment on that, Barbara? Because I'd just like to kind of double down on it a little bit, because as a boat owner myself, right? I think, uh, and we now we're focusing on a very commercial retail proposition, right? In boating, not the shipping industry or fishermen like that but it is a little too complex, right?

Uh, anything around boating is a little too complex. So Andrew has said it a few times, right? What they sell is peace of mind. Right? And, uh, there is room for someone to step in, right? You mentioned the opportunity. I think there's also a need for someone to step in and take that ownership and provide that orchestration of the connected experience on the boat.

So that is, you know, one of the opportunities that we see in this collaboration with Yamaha as well. It's really the time is now for the connected boat. And it's not just an opportunity, but a need as we see it.

Jim Morrish: Thank you for those comments, both Barbara and  Björn. I think it's not a bad time to spin forward the timeframes a little bit and say [00:17:00] what might be happening in the future. So Andrew, how's the connected environments going to change? How's technology going to further enhance boating in the future? Are there, any particularly exciting developments or potential opportunities that you see?

Andrew Cullen: Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think, so we're all in on this. I mean, our goal is to have all of our boats connected by 2030, all of our marine products and that is all the way from a tiller handle John Boat, WaveRunner to a jetboat to, you know, our large boats that we power with our large outboard engines, and the reason that we wanna do that is not only because we want to create a great customer experience so that they can stay in boating longer, buy more boats, buy bigger boats, because it's going to be a easier ownership experience, but we also wanna do some transformative things with our dealer network and our boat builder partners as well.

I'd say one of the ones that we are on the cusp of breaking open right now is related to predictive and preventative maintenance, based off of connected data that we have. So on our boats right now, when a fault code is thrown, we actually can [00:18:00] take a snapshot of the runtime before and after that fault code, and it can automatically be loaded into a dealer dashboard so the dealer can see what happened on a boat, diagnose what may have happened remotely before the customer has even had a chance to call with that dealer and describe to 'em what happened and potentially share with them an issue over the phone remotely, which is pretty amazing. And then if you take that to the next level, what we'd like to be able to do is be able to prevent issues before they even occur. So if we can draw some trend lines across some of that data and begin to see certain things happening to certain boats at certain times, certain runtimes, certain locations, we can actually find people who are on a similar journey to that and potentially let them know, Hey, we wanna make this change, we wanna provide this maintenance to you so that we can avoid this issue happening into the future and I think that's gonna be a pretty amazing thing for not only our dealers, but also for our customers to be able to have a better boat ownership experience.

Jim Morrish: Absolutely. It sounds like a much more cohesive experience and much easier for someone to get into that world [00:19:00] and maintain and keep a boat. Um,  Björn, a little earlier, you were referencing I think more the onboard experience, so how do you think that that might be evolving?

Björn Qvarsell: Yeah. I think to some extent, it's just inevitable, right? The evolution we're seeing right now, the mobile first app-centric user experience that we are all accustomed to, right? It's coming into boating. Everyone expects it to be in bolting two, right? And the, you know. Us old guys, right? We could probably make do without it, right? But the younger generation, as they approach becoming boat owners themselves, right? They will expect the same convenience, the same ease of use and empowerment that they feel in having the control of whatever gadget they have at their fingertips, right? So I think that's one of the bigger macro trends that we just have to deliver on to stay relevant and to gain a new audience. The always on connectivity, right, and, that's the thing that poses a few challenges but nothing [00:20:00] that we can't solve. But it's an interesting. You know, we have these parallels between the automotive and the marine industries, right? And we talk about legacy technologies sometimes, right? That's why I think it was interesting, and Barbara mentioned satellite on ships, right? In the automotive industry, satellite is the next frontier. In the marine industry it's the cellular that is the next frontier, right? So that's the thing that we always say we have to keep in mind that there are similarities, but also key differences, and on that satellite topic, right? We're gonna marry those two technologies and the aim is to provide, you know, for the user to be agnostic of the underlying technology that powers their streaming or music listening or onboarding entertainment services.

But it's funny also another parallel, where you talk about the edge of the network. I would argue that someone like Yamaha, for example, or a boat manufacturer or us boat users, we are at the true edge of the network a lot of times, right where the [00:21:00] radio signal actually stops and that brings a few of those edge use cases and when you've introduced the alternative, right, which would be satellite, are you gonna sit there on that edge of that network and flip flop between the two? Or how are you gonna manage it and as it relates to costs and quality of service. That is gonna be huge, right? To maintain a consistent user experience across technologies and for the boat builders and boat owners to not have to worry about such things, which is where I think we need to step up as connectivity aggregators in this business to solve that problem for the industry.

Jim Morrish: Absolutely. Um, thank, Thank you for that. And, and just, I'm gonna say to you now, Barbara, 'cause you mentioned some interesting developments in innovative developments earlier. What are some of the key emerging technologies and concepts that you've seen that are particularly impactful, you think in context of boating?

Barbara Pareglio: Sure. First of all, I wanna say probably I'm the only one, that never owned the boat here. Dunno [00:22:00] much about boats. So I'm really happy to have this conversation, you know, with you guys still learn, but so when I look at the news, I. Some of the exciting news for me, which might not be for you guys, but is seen that is also in both. We see a shift in, as you mentioned also at the beginning, Andrew, is electrical vehicles also, or hydrogens know, you know, different know, fuel uh, compared to traditional know, engines. But also what I find it interesting is automation, autonomy on boats and there are different types.

 I see some example particularly in Scandinavia. I think both in Sweden and in Norway or East. Ferries in cities, you know, short journey, very fixed journeys, but they use already electric and an autonomous ferries, so that is also means that there is a need of connectivity and there is [00:23:00] still a pilot in control in some on both of them, and they're not on board. I assume at the beginning they are on board for safety reason but we also see other type of shift is maybe this is more for big vessels, but they're difficult to navigate or have them, you know, bringing into the harbor onto the ports than you have actual remote piloting from experts that they are instead of before you're bringing them to the ship and drive it inside the port, marina, then you have some of it is on the ground, piloting those vessels within the port in an appropriate way. So I think it's quite nice uh, changes uh, what I see also in the maritime. And having those autonomy. So AI probably plays a role there. So at least this is an area that is interesting to me because even if I'm not, uh, experts in the area, it's something that before it was impossible, or at least not at the scales that we see now. [00:24:00] So, I was just wondering, you know, if this the trajectory of the future or where we will see autonomy electrification also in the maritime and the boot in the industry.

Jim Morrish: Absolutely, I'm sure that we will. So at this point I think we probably should of start to move on to the next phase of this podcast, but this has been an incredibly uh. interesting discussion and and between the three of you, you've really outlied know, a clearly very transformed experience of owning a boat and also the onboard experience and know, underlined how much more appealing and simpler that can be and also more inclusive, particularly of younger generations and obviously future boat owners, It so it should grow the market for all. So it's very interesting uh, discussion. But now it's time for 'What the tech', the segment where we talk about some more lighthearted tech news stories. So anything interesting or amazing from around the world of technology.  Björn, what story did you hear that made you smile or frown recently?

Björn Qvarsell: Yeah. I've [00:25:00] smiled about this a couple of times which says it it wasn't exactly recently, but it definitely plays into this discussion and I think it provides a clear illustration of the value of connected technology. So something that came to mind was a story that happened quite a few years ago now and I'm at a, uh, Midsummer celebration outside of Stockholm on one of the many islands, and there is in particular there in the harbor one guy, he feels very happy about himself 'cause he owns the biggest boat. Everyone's walking past this boat, admiring his boat and he's sitting up there in the evening sun sipping a glass of Rose. Feeling very accomplished, I'm sure. Right? And all of a sudden, this noise from the inlet, of a much, much, much bigger boat, a huge yacht, Emirate flags on it, and it's passing this other big boat, and it just happens that [00:26:00] he has the same version of a boat hanging off the side of his yacht as his little dingy, right. And why is this relevant? Well, when you connect a boat, one of the key values that you get is that realtime data and that usage data from that boat, which is something that boat builders use for their product development. And imagine the two different cases, the same boat providing data is gonna outline two extremely different scenarios for the boat builder to consider which plays into their product development effort, right?

So without that data, they would've just optimised the two boats at the same way, right. But now they have the opportunity to build a boat that is more suitable to hang off the side of a bigger yacht or even more suitable to sit rose in the evening sun more in the marina. So it's a more lighthearted story, but it clearly illustrates the need and the benefit of that data that a connected [00:27:00] solution provides.

Jim Morrish: Yeah, s ever, it's really hard to develop and optimise products without, you know, that detailed insight into know, exactly how they are being used. It's one of the classic potential benefits of IoT, albeit on a slightly grander scale, and moving on, Andrew, what caught your eye?

Andrew Cullen: Yeah, mine's a, mine's a little bit different. I mean, obviously the whole world is a buzz about AI and I love following the stuff. It kind of reminds me of right before the .com boom, where there's a lot of excitement about some new technology, and I think there's gonna be some, probably some big winners and there's gonna be some losers and uh, we'll see as this industry matures a little bit, I love following along.

I think it's fascinating and one of the neat things that I saw was an independent artist named Bon Iver came out with a new music video. It's called, 'There's a rhythm', for a song that he just created off his new album and the music video has a computer generated background for the entire thing and it shows the artist kind of walking along as the background changes, and they used a generative artist to [00:28:00] actually write the program that created this background for this music video. And it's a really interesting, I think artistic take on what AI could do or can do into the future.

It's not the most amazing thing you've ever seen by any stretch, but it's kind of a fascinating use case I think for Generative AI, and, you know, at the same time, YouTube also came out with an announcement recently where they were allowing the creation of music for background music for their videos to be created using AI as well, which gets around all the copyright issues that a lot of content creators might be facing, stuff like that. So, it's just kind of an interesting use case that encouraged everyone check out the video. It may be the first of many of its kind that turn out like that. So I thought that was kind of interesting.

Barbara Pareglio: I did That kind of video...

Actually, uh, you're right. It's kind of funny. Um, still work probably needed. Make it more, you know, real but it's, uh, it's quite funny, so yeah, good catch.

Björn Qvarsell: I think there's a huge relevance in this, [00:29:00] in how, you know, kind of going back to your question earlier about how we support Yamaha right? Made me think that Yamaha is supporting us at the same time, right? We are learning from them as we are helping them evolve, right, and we can draw these parallels and how we can apply AI in general, not just generative, right? I know, for the boating industry, there's a ton of analytics that can be gained from applying AI on that data that we talked about, right. But we can learn from other industries. We can learn from the drones that Barbara mentioned earlier. So this is the thing for us as, you know, the evolution is picking up steam. We need to pick up those tidbits of interesting technologies and news from other verticals, other industries to make even connected boating even better.

Jim Morrish: Exactly, those same few commands which can be used to create the background of a video or some music can now in fact be used to create, you an Agentic AI bot, which performs functions, and, you know, again, simplifies the [00:30:00] user experience. So it all comes together, even the benefits of uh, automatically creating cat videos and things like that has a relevance to boating it seems.

 Anyhow, we're going towards the end of this episode of Trending Tech. Barbara, perhaps you might like to tell us a little bit about the GSMA's activities in Meet Marine context and also the, in the wider transport space.

Barbara Pareglio: Sure, so in GSMA, we have this community, which we call it smart mobility. Traditionally, as you can understand, we worked more in automotive industry. Now it's a primary focus on drones and aviation, but we do not exclude maritime, and that's why we also wanted to have Andrew and  Björn uh, present in MWC because we think we should start the conversation.

The time is now, so let's not wait. So we welcome anyone in the community. So we also wanna have a shout out to anyone they're interested to keep track on news information, on connected transport in general. Uh, [00:31:00] so please subscribe to our newsletter, join the community. Uh, We welcome to hear new technology, how are all those new things are happening and very important for us to understand where the plays a role of connectivity, where we can work together as  Björn mentions, but also Andrews, there's nothing we can do without partnership, without sharing, without learning together. Uh, I think it's, yeah, every industry is so different, but we need to work together and make that happen.

So please, we have a lot of activity. We also have a satellite activity, but primarily I would say. Join, get your interest and uh, subscribe to our community on smart mobility.

Jim Morrish: Yeah, absolutely, there's a lot going on in this space and the GSMA is very much involved in in catalysing a lot of it, so thank you for that. Barbara, Andrew,  Björn , it's been an extremely interesting discussion, so thank you for joining me on this podcast, and with that, I think we can draw the podcast to a close and just a reminder that you can subscribe to the Trending Tech podcast wherever you found us today. And [00:32:00] indeed, thank you for joining us, and we're delighted to have you listening in as part of our growing audience around the world. We'll be back, uh, and I'll be back with another edition of the Trending Tech podcast soon focusing on another aspect of digital transformation.

So please stay tuned.