- DT Group subsidiary Hrvatski Telekom and the City of Dubrovnik cooperate to support Dubrovnik's candidature for the title of the European Capital of Culture
- Dubrovnik becomes a T-City – the first innovation, testing, and reference Smart City Center of Hrvatski Telekom
Today, Deutsche Telekom Group’s Croatian subsidiary Hrvatski Telekom (HT) and the City of Dubrovnik announced a cooperation agreement as part of Dubrovnik's candidature for the title of the European Capital of Culture 2020. The cooperation positions HT as the City's technology partner in projects that are going to change Dubrovnik's future. The first step in this direction is the joint opening of Dubrovnik’s first Smart Street at Obala Stjepana Radića, a pilot project developed in strategic partnership with IT company Cisco, and in collaboration with local partners.
The pilot project is part of the comprehensive Dubrovnik Smart City project, thanks to which Dubrovnik has become the first Croatian T-City, an innovation, testing, and reference Smart City Center of Hrvatski Telekom.
“Dubrovnik is a world-renowned tourist gem, a unique city and museum, and, by means of the Dubrovnik Smart City project and Hrvatski Telekom as technology project owner, it has also become a city of the future. We are proud to bring national and international partners to Dubrovnik and let them experience technological innovations and solutions that, being interconnected, will change the citizens’ culture of living and quality of life. With this initiative, we wish to send a clear message that HT is not only the technology leader, but also a leader of social changes in Croatia,” said Davor Tomašković, President of the Management Board of Hrvatski Telekom.
“We are extremely proud to witness the launch of Croatia’s first Smart Street in Dubrovnik. Deutsche Telekom is working on several smart city initiatives all around Europe with our partners focusing on the areas of smart lighting, smart parking and WiFi implementations to showcase our capabilities in the digital transformation of cities based on our powerful integrated Pan-European network,” says Ralf Nejedl, Senior Vice President B2B & ICT at Deutsche Telekom
Hrvatski Telekom is the third telecommunications operator in the European Union to have completed the IP migration project; therefore, essential infrastructure prerequisites have been created for the implementation of smart solutions and further development. The Smart Street is a pilot project representing synergy of a variety of ICT solutions and is based on the Cisco Digital Platform, an open, scalable, secure and manageable environment for integrating various solutions and applications.
“The smart solutions applied in this Street will directly deal with the citizens’ day-to-day problems, such as traffic jams in the city and the search for parking spots, which will improve the quality of life in Dubrovnik and at the same time generate savings for the City in terms of energy and finance. We will continue to work on the comprehensive Dubrovnik Smart City project, in strategic collaboration with Hrvatski Telekom, in order to extend smart solutions to the entire city area of Dubrovnik,” said Mayor Andro Vlahušić.
The Smart Street features public lighting with a multi-functional sensory network, and a variety of access technologies, from optical links to 4G and Wi-Fi networks. These technologies allow the residents and visitors of Dubrovnik to obtain free of charge Internet access at the pilot’s footprint, at high speed and throughput (50 Mbit/s). The Smart Street project also includes a traffic management solution that will use cameras to identify traffic violations, as well as innovative parking technology. A world premiere, the parking management system will automatically recognize vehicles and perform contactless charging of parking fees. It will also, both via smartphone application and via digital panels, provide real-time information on the vacancy status of parking spots, not only in Dubrovnik’s Smart Street, but all over the city. An important part of connected solutions in the Smart Street is the monitoring and control of environmental parameters that will provide extremely useful data for the city’s environment. All solutions are connected with the city’s legacy systems, and the Cisco Digital Platform will keep all collected data open for development of new solutions.
"On the way to digitization, data becomes the most strategic asset. The ability to secure the data, act on the data, and deliver services based on the data will determine success. Cities like Dubrovnik are also benefiting from connecting data, people, processes, and things. They can make more informed decisions, deliver new services and open new ways to communicate and interact with citizens. Cisco is proud to partner with the City of Dubrovnik and Croatia Telekom on Croatia's first Smart Street pilot,” says Markus Wissmann, Director of Sales, Smart Cities, EMEAR, Cisco.
Deutsche Telekom’s Smart City approach
Today’s cities face tremendous challenges – from rising populations and shrinking budgets to the need to economize on the use of resources. Smart city solutions introduce information and communication technology into public services in order to tackle these challenges. They also pave the way for making cities more attractive for their citizens and visitors in order to strengthen their economic position, create jobs and ensure prosperity.
Deutsche Telekom therefore sees a smart city as an ecosystem enabled by a more efficient administration of public services through ICT-based solutions, ultimately increasing the quality of life for its citizens, attracting visitors and supporting the economic development. Building on its expertise in operating, managing and advancing large communication infrastructures across a European footprint, a leading position in the M2M sector and its IT integration capabilities, Deutsche Telekom aims at putting the pieces of this complex smart city ecosystem together.
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 156 million mobile customers, 29 million fixed-network lines and around 18 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2015). The Group provides fixed-network/broadband, mobile communications, Internet, and Internet-based TV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in more than 50 countries and has around 225,200 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 69.2 billion in the 2015 financial year – around 64 percent of it outside Germany.