High-capacity fiber networks support big data, cloud computing that’s central to smart cities applications
Smart cities are taking a number of different forms as urban managers scale pilot projects into larger, citywide deployments that facilitate everything from more manageable traffic to increase efficiency in utility consumptions.
But the underlying principle is the same: connected sensor networks throughout the urban landscape connect to big data analytics engines to create real-time insight, which informs automated systems to shift resources accordingly. For example, if traffic is getting bad on a particular street, sensors can alert the computer controlling the city’s traffic lights and decrease the amount of time the lights on the busy thoroughfare stay red.
Antony Townsend, research director at Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future, said, “Unlike in the past, when urban upgrades called for large-scale physical changes – laying rail lines, plowing expressways through neighborhoods – getting smart entails fitting out tiny gadgets by the millions, that mostly work invisibly, behind the scenes.”
And those millions of gadgets, in order to lend the smart to smart cities, need to be connected by high-speed, low-latency fiber networks capable of transporting the tremendous potential data volume to the cloud-based systems that will turn numbers into actions.
Charles Wiedie, economic development director for the city of Hudson, Ohio, addressed the importance of fiber to smart cities in a recent LinkedIn post.
“High-speed fiber has become an integral piece of infrastructure, no different than water, sewer, or electric. Providing access to broadband Internet is how smart cities will be able to realize their potential… No matter how a city chooses to add a fiber network, doing so enables the community to become a smart city and harness all that comes with that title. These fiber networks make cities ideal locations for forward-thinking entrepreneurs to set up shop and for expanding companies that are looking for the connectivity that will help them grow. The potential and possibilities of a smart city are endless, and it’s time to seriously start thinking about how to implement a fiber network to take your city into the future.”
Hudson is building out its own municipal broadband network, which is an increasing trend in a space dominated by players like AT&T, Comcast and, more recently, Google Fiber.
Wiedie tipped his hat to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was an early pioneer in municipal broadband.
RCR Wireless News caught up with Harold DePriest, president and CEO of Chattanoog’as electric and fiber provider EPB, during the recent 2016 Energy Thought Summit, to discuss the synergies around municipally owned telecom and energy utilities.
The combination is “very symbiotic,” DePriest said. “It is changing us as a company and it’s changing our community. It’s bringing jobs and businesses and opportunities that we simply wouldn’t have had if we had chosen to wait for the standard communications companies coming to us.”
Further underscoring the importance of fiber, look at what’s happening now in Boston, Massachusetts.
Verizon announced earlier this month it would invest $300 million to deploy a fiber network in Boston meant to set the stage for future smart city initiatives as well as 5G mobile services.
“Boston is moving faster than our current infrastructure can support, and a modern fiber-optic communications platform will make us a next-level city,” Mayor Marty Walsh said. “Additionally, it is a priority to ensure that every resident has expanded access to broadband and increasing competition is critical to reaching that goal. I thank Verizon for their investment in Boston and for partnering with the city to provide the foundation for future technology growth.”
But fiber is bigger than just smart cities. University of Texas-Austin Professor of Innovation Bob Metcalf, inventor the Ethernet, explained in an interview with RCR Wireless News that fiber helps set the stage for importance technological work.
“In this world, having Internet is a big part of the infrastructure for innovation…The proliferation of the gigabit Internet – in the ’70s, we had the kilobit Internet. Then we went through the megabit Internet. Now we’re going to the gigabit Internet.
“And that’s an important part of building infrastructure, and Austin’s right on that. We have three, or four, or five different ways to get gigabit Internet now, led by Google, [which]provoked it with Google Fiber. Getting gigabit Internet in your city is a great way to enhance its participation in innovation, because you can connect to other places, get critical mass, share information and then even build systems on top of it.”
