Audi to launch Europe-wide SIM

Audi will launch Europe-wide, flat-rate SIMs in the new Q7 and the A4 next year in an effort to stop roaming rip-offs for connected drivers.

Developed with Irish company, Cubic Telecom, the white-label SIMs will allow drivers to remain connected, regardless of where they are in Europe, without the threat of painful bills when they return home.

“If you want to drive from Scotland to the Portugal or to Sicily, you would normally go through 20, 30, 40 roaming areas, but that won’t happen anymore,” Audi’s head of electronics development, Ricky Hudi, said this week.

“We don’t want to bother our customers to have 20 contracts around Europe. They should be happier to just have one flat rate and not to take care of the roaming costs.”

Audi isn’t just a customer of Cubic Telecom, though, because along with semi-conductor giant Qualcomm, it is a major investor. Audi’s investment arm, Audi Electronics Venture and Qualcomm invested €18 million in the machine-to-machine connectivity platform provider in May this year.

“If you go to the internet from inside the car, every bigger device that needs an internet connectivity and is mobile will use it from where it sits in the car. It will connect through the car’s LTE network,” Hudi said.

“The next big step is the digitalisation of human life and it will not stop in the car. On this track, every car small or big will be 100 per cent connected, all the time.”