Accelerating Smart City development in Barcelona

The first industrial revolution that took place in the late 1700s and early 1800s brought about a major shift in the distribution of the population, as huge numbers of people migrated from rural communities into urban areas. Urbanisation remains a growing global trend to this day, with around three million people moving into cities every week. Combined with limited resources and tight budgets, the challenges this creates for cities cannot be underestimated. Many are now embracing the smart city concept to help them create a sustainable urban environment for future generations to come.

How can cities succeed in the highly complex transformation into a smart city? Certainly, it’s not something they can accomplish alone. An open and collaborative approach is the only way to successfully, and sustainably, drive the digital transformation of a city.

That’s why we at Deutsche Telekom decided to establish the European Smart Solutions Center (ESC), which will be based in Budapest. The ultimate goal of the ESC is to accelerate the development of smart cities by consolidating our smart city expertise ensuring that our tried and trusted smart city solutions are made available to municipalities throughout Europe. The center will also advise cities on the utilization of funds allocated by the European Union for urban development.

A good way to keep an overview of all the different activities going on in a city is the implementation of a Smart City Dashboard, also known as  Mayor’s Dashboard. The aim of the Dashboard, which is already available in a number of cities across Europe, is to enable city administrators to monitor, control and optimize city infrastructure and applications from a single point. How convenient is that!

Citizens and visitors might say that an even more convenient service would be the availability of free Wi-Fi in public spaces in all cities in Europe. And guess what – this is set to become a reality by 2020, all thanks to the European Commission’s WiFi4EU initiative. We are supporting this initiative  by offering a fully customized, secure and managed wifi solution to cities  and helping them to obtain the relevant funding to enable them to participate in this initiative.

There’s a lot going on! If you want to know more about our smart city solutions, come and visit us at our booth during the Smart City World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona from 14-16 November. Hope to see you there!