Hanbyul Seo, senior research fellow, LG Electronics, discusses the latest advanced technologies and corresponding standardizations for connected mobility – including non-terrestrial network (NTN) communication – a topic recently highlighted in an exclusive feature in the January 2026 issue of ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International
Where does LG fit into the NTN ecosystem?
LG Electronics serves as a vehicle component supplier for global car makers, with vehicle connectivity solutions being one of its main products. As the automotive industry increasingly requires support for vehicle connectivity via NTN, my company can be considered a user device manufacturer in the NTN ecosystem.
What does your team have to offer in this field?
NTN standards and solutions based on a better mutual understanding of the communication and automotive industries. NTN communication systems should be able to support requirements from various industries, and standardization – 5G, which has been working on NTN for several years, and 6G, which has just started with the goal of harmonizing TN and NTN – is the very first but most fundamental step in creating technical enablers for NTN automotive use cases. In building NTN communication systems based on these standards, we need product solutions that can fully utilize the potential of the system design. I’m trying to contribute to making more versatile NTN standards from the automotive perspective, while simultaneously ensuring my company’s connectivity solutions support NTN automotive use cases with maximum performance and efficiency.
Cellular phone manufacturing was [previously] one of the main business sectors at LG Electronics. Although the company exited this sector several years ago, it has retained extensive knowledge and experience in terrestrial network communications. This expertise was combined with LG’s proficiency in the vehicle solution sector, greatly helping in understanding both industries together.
From a technical perspective, what have you had to develop ‘new’ for NTN communication with vehicles?
One important use case for NTN is supporting voice calls outside TN coverage, particularly in emergency situations. The data rate that NTN connectivity can support is generally much lower than what TN can provide, and with 3GPP-based IoT NTN – which, in my view, will be the first NTN system installed in vehicles – the data rate is too low to support voice calls even with powerful voice data compression. At the May 2025 5GAA meeting in Paris, my company demonstrated a user scenario where human voice in a vehicle is transformed into text and delivered via an IoT NTN system with an acceptable data rate.
What are the challenges when switching between NTN and terrestrial networks?
Switching between NTN and TN is a special case of changing the base station, which always happens in cellular communication systems, so smooth switching should theoretically be possible. However, in reality (at least in the current state), quite long service interruptions – tens of seconds or even longer – frequently occur during this switching. TN and NTN are typically operated in different frequency bands by different operators, which means that, unless the modem supports simultaneous TN and NTN operation (which is likely to increase implementation costs), the ongoing connection must be dropped when switching to the other one. This switching time is typically much longer for NTN due to the long distance between satellite and vehicle, the size of the cells each satellite creates, etc. Therefore, reducing or ideally eliminating service interruption time is the key issue in this switching.
What have been the biggest technical challenges so far, and what challenges remain to be solved, from LG’s perspective?
I think NTN will be a complementary option in vehicles while TN continues its role as the main connectivity solution. Thus, having NTN in a vehicle should be done at a reasonable cost. If TN and NTN share many common elements such as antennas, modem chipsets, etc., implementation costs will be lower, and the NTN component may benefit from the economies of scale in the TN ecosystem. I also think operational costs need to be considered. I hope a viable business model can be found to enable reasonable data costs for vehicles supporting both TN and NTN.
What do you think the next five years looks like for NTN vehicle communications?
I think we will see in the next five years the first NTN-equipped vehicles that support voice and very small data, probably using IoT-NTN. These vehicles would enable services like emergency calls/messages and repair/upgrade notifications outside TN coverage. As people begin to experience connected vehicles in places where TN cannot reach, more services with higher data rates will emerge.
Interested in reading more about NTN communication? Check out our exclusive feature first published in the January 2026 issue of ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.
