Smart Communication Infrastructure – Opportunities and Challenges
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
According to a MarketsandMarkets report "Smart Cities Market - Global Forecast to 2020”, it is estimated that the global smart cities market size will grow from over USD 312 billion in 2015 to USD 757.74 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 19.4%. Top cities like Seoul and Singapore in Asia, London, and Barcelona in Europe and New York City in the US, have already established a comprehensive smart city plan. There are other cities which lead the ‘urban living index’ but still are figuring out ways to replace exiting layouts.
We will focus on how the ‘smart communication infrastructure’ is being implemented across cities, including in India.
The ‘Green vs. Brown Field’ challenge:
Like any development, smart cities will have to come with a clear plan for communication. The experience of many cities in India – the metros especially don’t have coordinated plans. The existing infrastructure has both wireless – telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and likes who have upped the infrastructure to 4G, but still, the network performance is not ubiquitous.
There is wide networked infrastructure by Broadband or ADSL service providers where higher bandwidth is possible by consumers and businesses – the issue is around the last mile – many areas are still infeasible either because the area does not fall under their ‘service territories’ or lack of coordination.
In India, some active POC testing is happening. This involves smart technologies involving M2M and IOT based technologies. Also contextual is low range power network that can enable millions of IOT devices to be connected.
Breaking it down- ‘Smart Communications.'
The essence of smartness is about how ‘data’ is captured, analysed, processed and acted upon. One of the core components of this is – smart communication within cities – this involves multiple aggregations and access points. A city may access data from smart devices and sensors embedded in the roadways, power grids, buildings, and other assets. It shares that data via a smart communications system that is typically a combination of wired and wireless networks. It then uses smart software to create valuable information and digitally enhanced services such as health care assistance, security and safety, real-time traffic monitoring, and managing the environment.
Data communication takes place, defines and describes the way in which interrelated entities communicate more effectively between each other; systems arranged and connected to emerge smartness in use and provide higher quality services. In other words, effective deployment of ICT, if possible, may be a good factor of making easy modular engineering in building smart cities and understanding relationships of all the information we are gathering.
This means that the role of network service provider is multi-faceted, but also not whole and sole responsible – it essentially gives a first perspective of the ‘smartness’ of an application that can leverage the other tools and technologies.
The realization of smart cities involves different components and players: sensors vendors, equipment vendors, communication providers, services providers, business innovation. Users of smart cities belong to different domains, such as industry, utilities, transport/logistic, health care.
Some of the examples like Toronto, NYC, and Amaravati, India (a new Smart City), would give a fair idea on how different cities approach upgrading communication infrastructure across the world.
The Toronto Example – ‘Green Field in an existing city’:
One such initiative is by Google – a city that is the largest capital and a growing metropolis, a multicultural melting pot. This is also a growing tech population. Google is planning to roll out a ‘refit strategy’ using strong urban communication infrastructure.
According to Bloomberg, Sidewalk Labs LLC, urban innovation unit of Page's Alphabet Inc., and sister unit of Google Inc. will leverage Google’s expertise and its team to build a smart city – or refit the existing city into a smart city. It has applied to develop a 12-acre strip in downtown Toronto, responding to a recent city agency request for proposals. ‘The bid fits with the company's ambition to create a connected, high-tech city or district from scratch,' says Bloomberg.
The purpose of such ‘refit’ essentially would be to leverage the comprehensive refitting plan acknowledged and activated by the Toronto City Corporation. The key here is again not the technology, but a more comprehensive approach, allowing private sector participation, but with contiguity.
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The NYC Example ‘Retrofitting ‘:
The most visible refit strategy has been LinkNYC –a network of ad-supported Wi-Fi kiosks in New York City run by Intersection, a Sidewalk Labs investment. The refit has worked well, and the issue around refit is always about ‘political will’ and ‘feasibility’ – changing the old order.
LinkNYC claims, quoting the website - LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind communications network that will replace over 7,500 pay phones across the five boroughs with new structures called Links. Each Link provides superfast, free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging and a tablet for access to city services, maps, and directions. It further adds that LinkNYC is completely free because it is funded through advertising. Its groundbreaking digital OOH advertising network not only provides brands with a rich, context-aware platform to reach New Yorkers and visitors but will generate more than a half billion dollars in revenue for New York City.
Sidewalk has cited the ad revenue from New York kiosks a viable revenue model for smart city network service providers, and in fact, Intersection is planning to expand to London this year.
The Amravati, India example:– The Green Field Opportunity
The Infrastructure Corporation of Andhra Pradesh had inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with International Enterprise Singapore to develop the master plan for Andhra Pradesh’s capital, Amaravati, in India, in three stages. The Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority had floated a request for proposal. The key factor is that demographical factors and ‘smart applications’ are going into the considerations for development of IT infrastructure and Central Command & Control Centres, surveillance, systems, intelligent traffic and transport, fibre optic network infrastructure for all smart applications.
The main factor here is that new city corporations are engaging experienced consultants to consider a comprehensive approach to planning and laying out the communication infrastructure.
Challenges to establishing ‘smart communication’ in other cities:
One main issue is to maintaining the backhaul – in many development countries, there are many agencies and service providers that don’t work coherently to establish a comprehensive backhaul. Backhaul is essentially the single biggest problem as it is the carrier of raw data across cities and countries. Civic agencies, in particular, need to tune to the idea of providing ‘secured and holistic support’ to backhaul services.
Another issue is clearly the last mile – some neighbourhoods are simply limited because of existing infrastructure and demography. As in the case of Canadian cities, Christopher De Sousa, the Director of Ryerson University's School of Urban and Regional Planning, points out, it is a whole different scenario when it entails changing the city's existing infrastructure. ‘You have to consider long-time residents, gentrification concerns, and the displacement of high density jobs and the limitations of existing infrastructure
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/google-smart-city-toronto-1.4123289
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In India though, there are issues around the regulatory environment- especially from a civic perspective – indiscipline development and unplanned infrastructure, unscheduled and uncoordinated road digging – are a part of the country’s social psyche. Existing cities need to restructure their planning systems to be able to confirm to the regulatory environment.