A voice call from a car, routed over satellite, with no cellular signal involved.
That’s what Viasat and BMW Group demonstrated this week at the 5G Automotive Association’s Meeting Week in Munich, Germany.
The demonstration, delivered by Viasat, is the first automotive satellite voice call shown fully integrated into a BMW Group vehicle’s infotainment system. It builds directly on an earlier eSIM demonstration involving Cubic3, the connectivity platform behind millions of connected vehicles worldwide.
Viasat and BMW Group demonstrate in-vehicle satellite calling
Inside a BMW iX3, Viasat engineers routed a voice call over the NB-IoT protocol using Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 solution and the Fraunhofer IIS NESC AI voice codec. The call travelled over Viasat’s L-band satellite network rather than a terrestrial cellular connection.
For the first time, this was managed directly through the vehicle interface rather than a separate handset or module. Drivers and passengers initiated and controlled the call from inside the car.
Sandeep Moorthy, Senior Vice President of Advanced NTN Solutions at Viasat, said the goal is a future where drivers can stay connected wherever the road takes them.
The Munich demonstration didn’t start from nothing. It followed an earlier proof of concept in which Cubic3 supplied the eSIM capability that let the vehicle authenticate and connect in the first place.
Cubic3 already brings cellular and satellite connectivity together on a single platform for automotive OEMs, giving software-defined vehicles coverage across more than 200 countries and territories through access to over 550 mobile networks. That combination of cellular and satellite management on one platform is precisely what makes a handover from terrestrial coverage to NTN workable in a production vehicle, rather than a lab curiosity.
Viasat, BMW Group, Cubic3, and Fraunhofer IIS are all active members of 5GAA, the cross-industry group developing scalable connectivity standards for connected vehicles.
Why satellite connectivity matters for automotive OEMs
Cellular coverage still has gaps: motorways through remote terrain, rural regions, areas with limited network infrastructure. When a vehicle loses signal in one of those gaps, so do its safety-critical services.
Extending voice and messaging over satellite closes that gap. For OEMs, it means emergency assistance and critical safety applications can keep working regardless of where the vehicle is, not just where the nearest cell tower happens to be.
5GAA members see the same connectivity extending to fleet management and over-the-air software updates in low-connectivity regions, alongside the voice and messaging use case shown in Munich.
What comes next for satellite-enabled vehicles
The NB-IoT protocol used in this demonstration supports lower data-rate applications under global 3GPP standards. Future 5G-NR satellite releases are expected to go further, supporting video streaming and seamless roaming between terrestrial and satellite networks.
For Cubic3, this demonstration is a marker of where connectivity management is heading: not cellular or satellite, but both, handled on one platform so OEMs don’t have to manage the handover themselves.
Find out how Cubic3 brings cellular and satellite connectivity together on a single connectivity platform.
