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FINAL WORD
Trends for 2019 –
Smart Cities
Smart communities will enrich the lives of residents and make local
governments more efficient in responding to their citizens’ needs.
From security to convenience to revenue generation, Smart City
applications will change the way cities operate and the way we live
and work, says Ehab Kanary, Vice President of Enterprise, Middle
East and Africa at CommScope.
I
t all starts with connectivity – Smart City residents,
vehicles, systems and applications must be
connected, and in most cases that involves fibre
infrastructure. According to a recent report by KPMG,
the amount spent on Smart Cities on technology is set
to double in the coming four years within the Middle
East and Africa (MEA) region. The total spending is
anticipated to increase from US$1.3 billion to US$2.7
billion during the review period. 5,000 newly deployed Wi-Fi hotspots providing free
Internet connection to 50 billion devices expected to
be connected all over the city.
Having said that, there are three key trends that will
impact Smart Cities in the MENA region in 2019. Let’s
take a look. Creative financing
Longer-term planning
Companies have traditionally built out specific, siloed
applications like surveillance cameras, smart lighting
or traffic sensors, but for 2019 they will start to take
the longer view and think about building a basic
infrastructure to support all Smart City applications.
It only makes sense; otherwise, the city is digging up
the same streets every year or so to add infrastructure
for each new application. For example, one city
installed basic security cameras on light poles but
did so without installing fibre connectivity that
would enable adding small cells to those poles or
implementing facial recognition applications for the
cameras. Now, the city must upgrade its light pole
connectivity network – a painful and costly process.
To avoid having to upgrade networks in the future, city
planners are now educating themselves about future
possibilities, consulting with IoT vendors and network
connectivity vendors, and working to develop a plan for
the long term.
Under the Dubai Plan 2021, the government will offer
ubiquitous Internet connectivity through high-speed
fibre optic and high bandwidth Wi-Fi networks, with
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Overall, data connectivity is becoming the Fourth Utility
in cities – it’s a must-have to do business, and cities are
recognising this. Connectivity in homes and businesses
is a competitive advantage for cities, and they are
rushing to implement it.
Like water, gas and electricity, cities don’t always
deliver the service, but they enable construction of
the basic infrastructure that delivers the service. We’re
starting to see more projects that combine government
funding with public/private partnerships.
In Europe and elsewhere around the world, many
national governments are mandating and providing
funding for large fibre build-outs. In North America,
service providers, developers and local utilities are
deploying parts of the civic connectivity infrastructure
while the city facilitates permitting and planning for
construction.
Electric utilities are in a unique position to deploy fibre
infrastructure because they already own rights-of-way
and have existing overhead poles or underground
conduits that can accommodate new fibre, so they can
deploy fibre more quickly and at a lower cost.
In some cases, cities in North America are funding or
partnering with local power companies to build out
the ‘Middle Mile’ of the fibre network (Figure 1) – the
part from central offices or other distribution hubs
to neighbourhoods or business parks. Middle-Mile
networks are the most common municipal model due
to less risk, the decreased cost of deployment and the
ability to lease excess conduit/fibre to private providers.
Cities and municipal organisations building Middle-
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