ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 299 Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) include telematics and all types of communications in vehicles, between vehicles (e.g., car‐to‐car), and between vehicles and fixed locations (e.g., car‐to‐infrastructure). However, ITS are not restricted to Road Transport ‐ they also include the use of ICT for rail, water and air transport, including navigation systems39. There are currently the following projects related to automotive ITS: A Continuous Air interface Long and Medium range (CALM) provides continuous communications between a vehicle and the roadside using a variety of communication media, including cellular, 5 GHz, 63 GHz and infra‐red links. CALM will provide a range of applications, including vehicle safety and information, as well as entertainment for driver and passengers. The aim of CALM is to provide wide area communications to support ITS applications that work equally well on a variety of different network platforms, including Second Generation (2G) mobile (e.g., GSM/GPRS), 3G (IMT‐2000e.g., W‐CDMA/CDMA 1x EV‐DO) 4G (IMT‐Advanced), as well as satellite, microwave, millimeter wave, infrared, WiMAX and short‐range technologies like Wi‐Fi. The main characteristics of CALM are: Allows for continuous (or quasi‐continuous) communications, in three main modes of operation: Vehicle‐Infrastructure; Vehicle‐Vehicle; and Infrastructure‐Infrastructure. Inter‐operability and seamless handover between networks and applications. In its initial specification, CALM used Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) exclusively. However, in order to meet the requirement for very fast short communications in time and in critical situations, such as C2C applications (e.g., collision avoidance), a non‐IP solution with lower processing overhead and lower latency may be more suitable, and this is incorporated in the new specification (CALM Fast). It is the single global architecture which is compatible with existing ITS standards (e.g., DSRC) and wireless standards (e.g., GSM/GPRS) and which is expected to conform to future ones too. It provides platform‐independent support for multiple radio communication network platforms. For instance, the basic CALM system architecture (ISO 27217) foresees support for 10 main categories of network, and 22 different sub‐categories each of which would need a different Service Access Protocol (SAP). The next figure shows the new (2007) merged CALM architecture. The likely future direction seems to be a flexible CALM architecture and a division of labour among different organizations. ____________________ 39 European Telecommunications Standards Institute http://www.etsi.org/technologies‐clusters/technologies/intelligent‐transport