- Deutsche Telekom launches white paper “Connected Cities” at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, November 17 to 19
- Presentation of Deutsche Telekom’s smart city solutions implemented across Europe
- Diamond Sponsorship with Cisco at event: Pavilion 2, Level 0, Stand 390
Deutsche Telekom further pushes the transformation of European cities into intelligent urban areas with the launch of its new white paper "Connected Cities" at this year’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. The 28-page document provides an overview of the current state of communication infrastructures and solutions for Smart Cities, and highlights some of the many smart city solutions Deutsche Telekom has already implemented across Europe.
The report is aimed at decision makers, municipal administrations, planers, and other experts and multipliers who would like to know more about the background and technical foundations, as well as the challenges and opportunities of the digital transformation of urban space. Examples such as urban parking, mobility management and street lighting demonstrate what current solutions are already capable of achieving and how they fit into a city-wide network.
Deutsche Telekom’s Smart City approach
Building on its expertise in operating, managing and advancing large communication infrastructures, a leading position in the M2M sector and its IT integration capabilities, Deutsche Telekom aims at putting the pieces of the complex smart city ecosystem together benefitting from its European footprint. “Cities have to design, deploy and operate a new breed of communication infrastructure in order to integrate quite different types of solutions into a coherent, manageable and sustainable information architecture,” says Ralf Nejedl, Senior Vice President B2B & ICT at Deutsche Telekom. “That is why telcos are a driving force for the implementation of smart city solutions. We focus on offering cities our smart city capabilities based on a powerful integrated Pan-European network for the digitization of Europe.”
Intelligent Transport Systems and E-Mobility Solutions
The transition to smart cities is actively pushed forward and funded by legislative institutions such as the European Commission who ranks Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and E-Mobility solutions among the beneficial infrastructures of connected cities very high. In Budapest, for example, public transport utilizes FUTAR – a modular traffic management and passenger information system by T-Systems Hungary to support the Centre for Budapest Transport: from planning timetables and optimizing routes to analyzing past and current data. Currently, around 2,300 vehicles are directly connected with FUTAR, providing real-time information to passengers. People who prefer to go by bike in Budapest can use the public bike-sharing system MOL Bubi by T-Systems Hungary which is comprised of 98 docking stations and 1,150 bikes so far.
In Croatia, Hrvatski Telekom is very active in the international project MOBINCITY, a group of 13 partners, covering sectors like traffic management, energy, IT and telecommunications. Up to now, Hrvatski Telekom has successfully commercialized 20 Electronic Vehicle charging stations in eight Croatian cities including real-time status updates of the charging stations integrated in a dedicated online portal. In September 2015, the company also started a three-month joint promotion with Mitsubishi Motors for the Croatian market.
Together with the Czech national supercomputing center, universities, industry players and public authorities, T-Mobile Czech Republic is a strategic partner in the Rodos initiative. This Transport Systems Development Centre has build a complex mobility model throughout the Czech Republic by combining data from mobile networks and traffic monitoring. By giving an overview of the actual distribution of people and detecting deviations in real time, the mobility model provides important information for decision making in critical situations. In Prague’s metropolitan area, for example, mobility information generated by the Rodos initiative is used for optimizing the city’s integrated public transport system.
Smart Street Lighting
Another use for which Smart City applications are already being extensively deployed is smart street lighting. Here, Hrvatski Telekom and its partner Cisco have implemented a lighting solution in the city of Dubrovnik. In May 2015, the first demo lamp was switched on in Lujo Soletic park. The lamp consists of integrated movement and air-pollution sensors as well as temperature and sound sensors. In November 2015, a further intelligent lighting solution called Smart Service Point has been deployed by T-Systems Hungary and ELMŰ-ÉMÁSZ Company Group in one of Hungary’s busiest spots, the Széena Square in Budapest. It provides a smart electric car charging unit, a WiFi router, a security camera and emergency button in addition to its smart lighting function. Additional lighting pilot projects are being implemented throughout Deutsche Telekom Group’s European footprint during the coming months.
Diamond Partnership with Cisco at Barcelona event
Deutsche Telekom will take part in this year’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona as Diamond Partner of Cisco to showcase these European best practice examples as well as many other innovative smart city solutions and partnerships. The congress is known as the world’s leading smart city event, where more than 300 smart city experts will share their knowledge and visions on how to create sustainable and livable cities.
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 151 million mobile customers, 30 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2014). The Group provides fixed network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV 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 approximately 228,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 62.7 billion in the 2014 financial year – more than 60 percent of it outside Germany.