AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone Partners with Ericsson Routes for High-Speed Connectivity – TransportUP

07 May 2022 || 3 min read

The AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone (MIZ), which provides new mobility developers access to a testing ecosystem, resources, and partnerships essential to comprehensively test, scale, and commercialize new technologies, has now announced a partnership with Ericsson Routes, a company that provides maps of cellular connectivity strength. With this partnership, AllianceTexas hopes to provide users of the Mobility Innovation Zone with the knowledge of where they can find dependable, high-speed cellular connectivity routes for their autonomous aerial and ground-based vehicles.

The AllianceTexas space is a massive 27,000 acre master-planned industrial and residential development in North Texas, which includes its own airport, and its own unique air and ground logistics infrastructure. Being under one organization allows this development to host innovations in autonomous vehicles. To this end, AllianceTexas has created its own Mobility Innovation Zone, which provides new mobility developers with a proving ground to test and advance their new vehicles in real full-ecosystem environments. Aerial mobility partners such as Wing and Bell have taken advantage of the intermodal hubs and urban airspace within AllianceTexas to begin rolling out their drone delivery aircraft.

Now, AllianceTexas has partnered with Ericsson Routes which is it says is ‘like a Waze for wireless cellular connectivity’, to provide autonomous vehicle operators with the ability to plan their vehicle routes in accordance with the most reliable connectivity areas.

Said Russell Laughlin, Executive Vice President of Hillwood, which designed the AllianceTexas development: “Partnering with Ericsson Routes and their technology leadership gives our customers world-class and cutting-edge services that will advance the mobility industry. This unique technology offers mobility leaders an opportunity to be at the forefront of ensuring their products have the connectivity they need to operate now and well into the future.”

Image: Ericsson Routes analyzes potential autonomous vehicle routes for connectivity strength

Why it’s important: Reliable, high-speed cellular connectivity will be key in developing autonomous and semi-autonomous aerial mobility and logistics aircraft operations in the near future. This connectivity allows aircraft to communicate with airspace management systems, ground controls, and more. With this partnership with Ericsson Routes, new aerial mobility developers in AllianceTexas (like Wing and Bell) will be able to find flight routes with dependable, high-speed connectivity. In addition, it’s important to note that Hillwood, which had an important hand in creating AllianceTexas, has a history of creating aviation innovation infrastructure.

Source // Alliance Texas

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