BMW has already put more than 14 million telematic-equipped vehicles on the world’s roads over the past quarter-century. Currently, BMW has more than 2.3 million subscribers worldwide. As time has passed, the connection has changed how many functions on a BMW operate.
The first major foray into the connected future took place in 1998 with “BMW Telematics” and the introduction of the BMW Assist package comprising concierge services, traffic information and intelligent emergency call. BMW claimed that if your airbags went off, your call would be placed first in line when connecting to the police. At that time, the analog telephone was still used for establishing an online connection. Unfortunately, all of these vehicles had an analog cellular phone connection until analog cellular providers phased out analog services in 2008.