The world is evolving and so are the emergency call systems in vehicles.
The further development of the automatic eCall, the Next Generation eCall, was tested from June 10 to 13, 2025 at the “Next Generation eCall Plugtests 2025”. The event, organized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), took place at the Telekom Campus in Bonn. Deutsche Telekom joined forces with vehicle manufacturers and control center equipment suppliers to test the next generation of vehicle emergency calls.
OECON Products & Services GmbH was also present and provided the eCall test and development server for the tests. This is specially designed for testing eCall systems (Inband eCall and NG eCall) and can be used for certification.
From 2018, all new vehicle models had to be equipped with an eCall system. However, these systems are still based on outdated 2G and 3G technology, which has already been switched off in many countries. With the Next Generation Emergency Call (NG eCall), the urgently needed modernization to the new 4G/LTE/5G networks is now taking place. In addition to a faster connection setup, the emergency data is available in a control center much earlier than with the in-band transmission of the previous eCall emergency call.
From January 2026, control centers must be able to receive NG eCalls. Of course, this also requires mobile networks to be able to transmit these calls. New vehicles must then also be equipped with NG eCall in order to be approved. One year later, from January 2027, this will also apply to vehicles that have already been type-approved.
