Report sharpens best practice for Connected City technology use cases to tackle urban challenges

Singapore, 15 November 2017 – The Connected City Advisory Board (CCAB), a committee developed by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), has published an update to its Connected City Blueprint. The latest version of the report focuses on the different issues and challenges that cities are overcoming in order to make their cities smart. It explores how different technologies can help cities develop their Connected City Plans to tackle urban challenges, whilst highlighting the need for engagement with and collaboration between the different stakeholders, including the Citizens, City Authorities, Private Sector Companies, Innovators and Entrepreneurs and Academia, in order to achieve success.

The CCAB Connected City Blueprint 2017 has been put together with the help of over 40 cities, as well as industry experts, and is a guideline for cities and government authorities looking for support in the approach and development of their Connected City Plans. It includes valuable lessons to be learned from the most successful early adopters, and is a source for the broader wireless industry to better understand the challenges and opportunities the Connected City and Smart City ecosystem offers.

The inclusion of new use cases will help all partners to make more informed decisions when planning their approach to Connected City project and programs. The highlighted cities leading the way in their commitment to using smart technology capabilities, acting as a benchmark for future deployments include Milton Keynes, Porto, Riyadh and Sydney (full list below).
“The global population shift toward urban city living is no small issue faced by cities. By preparing for this now, and working together to anticipate the infrastructure and technology issues that are to come, the WBA has seen the smart technology capabilities of cities around the world progress rapidly,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the WBA. “These Connected City trials are resulting in significant changes, enabling new ways of addressing the way we manage our technology and resources.”

 

With this improved understanding the report highlights several key trends:

  • More integrated approaches to city issues have seen a breakdown in some of the siloed municipal approaches to energy, housing, transport and health
  • More cohesive strategies and management of big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are supporting the appearance of city platforms
  • The expansion of partner ecosystems is driving collaboration between Government, Industry, Academia and Citizens to enable the delivery of the Connected City vision
  • The gap between connected city programs and city priorities is closing

 

“The continuous rise of data represents a huge opportunity for Cities,” continued Shenwai. “Those willing to step up and harness that opportunity safely and securely have the potential to make enormous advancements in the fields of healthcare, energy, mobility, education and sustainability. We would encourage other Cities to join the CCAB to work together to learn and benefit from the different technologies available today, but moreover embrace the emerging engagement and business models.”

The report also highlights various vertical implementation models designed to build understanding relating to raising the funds and managing state assets for Connected City Public Private Partnerships models.

The CCAB and the WBA will continue the development of this Connected City Blueprint, both in terms of releasing additional content in 2018 as well as making it available to the industry in different formats including an eBook. The CCAB invites different stakeholders to get involved in this industry-wide initiative: please contact contactus@wballiance.com for further information.
The Connected City Blueprint is available to download here.

 

A full list of the newly included smart city use cases is below:

  • Milton Keynes, UK: UK Autodrive Self Driving Pods Trial, MK Smart & Citizen Engagement
  • London, UK: Things Connected
  • Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: IoT. Smart Parking Management System
  • Porto, Portugal: Turning vehicles into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots
  • Sydney, Australia: Location Based Services at Public Venues
  • Granada, Spain: Smart Waste Management Solution
  • Singapore: W-Fi Connectivity and Broadband Proliferation
  • San Jose, US: Next Generation Hotspot Deployment for Public Access
  • York, UK: Historic City Mesh Network for Public Access

 

 

About the Wireless Broadband Alliance

 Founded in 2003, the mission of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is to champion the development of the converged wireless broadband ecosystem through seamless, secure and interoperable unlicensed wireless broadband services for delivering outstanding user experience. Building on our heritage of NGH and carrier Wi-Fi, WBA will continue to drive and support the adoption of Next Generation Wi-Fi services need coexistence and convergence of unlicensed and licensed networks across the entire public Wi-Fi ecosystem, including IoT, Big Data, Converged Services, Smart Cities, 5G, etc. Today, membership includes major fixed operators such as BT, Comcast and Time Warner Cable; seven of the top 10 mobile operator groups (by revenue) and leading technology companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Huawei Technologies, Google and Intel. WBA member operators collectively serve more than 2 billion subscribers and operate more than 30 million hotspots globally.

The WBA Board includes AT&T, Boingo Wireless, BT, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Intel, KT Corporation, Liberty Global, NTT DOCOMO, Orange and Ruckus Wireless. For a complete list of current WBA members, please click here.

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