A survey of smart city activities around the world shows that much of the focus of smart city projects remains on establishing the most basic of services such as connectivity. In fact, there is a clear lag in the deployment of technologies and services in smart city applications, versus what technologies enable. We call this the cascading technology… Read More »
Three events were held this past week that provided an opportunity to get a midterm pulse of the telecom industry: the MWC-Shanghai, 5G World and WBA Congress. Having attended the last two, I wanted to summarize a few observations: * The vision for 5G is converging; industry is aligning along common themes. A few leading operators are racing to claim 5G capability… Read More »
Beyond the hype of Smart Cities lies a number of challenges that have made the realization of smart cities a slow and arduous process. Some of the top challenges in my experience are the following: 1- Budget: cities operate on very tight budgets. The budget allocated to information technology is a relatively small part of the overall budget.… Read More »