Deutsche Telekom: The Smart Cities Of Tomorrow

Many European cities are great places to live in, but are they also smart? Deutsche Telekom is using information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance urban services across the CEE region.

The Deutsche Telekom whitepaper “Connected Cities” defines a “smart” city as having a partially digitized urban ecosystem increasing its self-awareness and efficiency through ICT. This also encourages increased participation from citizens, authorities and businesses. Smart cities are better prepared to face the challenges of rising populations, shrinking budgets and the resulting need to economize resources.

Deutsche Telekom introduced this whitepaper at this year’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona aiming to speed up the transformation of European mid-sized cities towards intelligent urban areas. The report highlights some of the many smart city solutions Deutsche Telekom has already implemented. Some of these projects were also presented during the Open Days in Brussels, inspiring dozens of stakeholders from across Europe with our workshop “Smart Solutions for Citizens”.

Deutsche Telekom’s Smart City Transformation

Becoming a smart city requires cities to design, deploy and operate a new generation of communication infrastructure allowing for the integration of already existing and newly introduced vertical solutions.  Smart street lighting networks are a special case here, as they allow the implementation of additional solutions such as Wifi or video surveillance.

An important example is the street lighting project in Croatia. In May 2015, the first demo street lights were set up in Dubrovnik, followed by a similar installation in Split. The light post contains multiple integrated sensors registering movement, air pollution, temperature, sound. The sensors provide a detailed view of their surroundings. Hrvatski Telekom implemented this solution together with our strategic partner Cisco. Additional lighting pilot projects are being implemented throughout the CEE region in coming months.

In Budapest, T-Systems Hungary developed and implemented FUTAR – a modular traffic management and passenger information system supporting 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.

Regardless of the purpose of our smart city projects: A close cooperation between the public and the private sector is always crucial to create synergies and to realise the full potential of the Internet of Things. Also, it is the participation of citizens in the innovation process which enables tailor-made solutions responding to people’s needs.

The importance of Data Analytics

Smart City solutions are also inextricably linked to data analytics: The analysis of data drives accurate insights into urban problems which help to define smart solutions. Take for example the traffic management solution of T-Mobile Czech: With their strategic partner T-Mobile Czech Republic, the Transport Systems Development Centre Rodos devised a complex mobility model for the whole of the Czech Republic. Combining data from mobile networks and traffic monitoring, this model gives an overview of the actual distribution of people and detects deviations in real time. This generates 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.