Smart cities need reliable networks to connect to the internet to make optimal use of all the data available from a range of sensors.

Smart cities aim to improve a city by increasing efficiencies, reducing costs, and enhancing the quality of life for the citizens who live there. This also includes anticipating future challenges such as demographic shifts, further climate change, and natural disasters.

Much of what will be required of telecommunications networks to underpin the smart cities revolution is very similar to what we like to see today – high speed, high levels of reliability, and high availability. However, fiber providers will need to deliver on all of these qualities to a greater extent, particularly when it comes to providing critical public services such as healthcare.

Telecommunications Will Help Smart Cities Support Various Devices

The “smarter” a city becomes, the more businesses, public agencies, and individual consumers are going to do online – and they’re not all going to be using the same hardware. For a smart city to function effectively in a way that works for everyone involved, networks will need to be ready and able to transfer data quickly and reliably across an enormous number of devices.

When it comes to devices, it’s not just cell phones and tablets anymore. Smart cities involve a huge and growing variety of appliances, equipment, and infrastructure systems such as closed-circuit television, traffic lights, bike racks, parking meters, energy meters, and elevators to name just a few. These connected devices are referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), and telecommunications providers will need to invest to make sure their networks and software management systems can cope.

Smart city initiatives only work if a number of parties work well together. There are huge opportunities here for telecommunications providers and vendors to work more closely with public bodies than they’ve ever done before, but they have to recognize how cities work. This applies particularly to finance where providers will need an understanding of how public procurement works, and of the constraints on capital infrastructure spending in many cities.

Using Telecommunications to Ensure the Security of Smart Cities

Smart city technology will make everyday life much more convenient. However, it will also create new potential vulnerabilities, not only because of the creation, transfer, and storage of data being attractive to hackers but also because of the increasing number of services that will rely on secure and reliable networks. Cybersecurity has to evolve not only to guard against deliberate attacks but also to account for outages caused by human errors, equipment failure, and large-scale disruption.

Telecommunications and connectivity will play a key role in the smart cities revolution. With more city municipalities preparing for shifts towards smart cities, telecommunication carriers have been preparing their networks to support the move.

GeoTel is the leading provider of telecommunications infrastructure data, including fiber routes and data centers, crucial to building smart cities. For over sixteen years, GeoTel’s products have been providing companies and government entities with the leverage and insight necessary to make intelligent, location-based business decisions. For more information or a demo, please contact our experts at (407) 788-8888.