In addition to smart city deployments, ZTE launches government-oriented IoT application with China Mobile
Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer ZTE has been involved in more than 150 smart city projects across China, the company’s CIO and chairman of ZTESoft, Chen Jie told reporters.
“We have a very active participation in the smart city business. The number of smart city projects in which we are involved is growing every month. We offer solutions including smart metering, smart lighting, and smart parking, among others,” the executive said.
Speaking on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Chen also said that the company is seeing increasing business opportunities in smart city projects in certain Asian markets such as India, where the local government is seeking to develop a nationwide smart city program.
ZTE’s internet of things business is oriented toward telecoms operators, corporations and governments. The executive said that the vendor already has a portfolio of IoT solutions targeting these three segments. “In the telecoms operators segment, we have established a joint innovation center with China Mobile to explore IoT technologies three years ago. We are already cooperating with China Mobile to test NB-IoT and we are seeing positive results from that cooperation,” the executive said.
Chen also said that ZTE is working with China Telecom in the IoT field. “Outside China, we are also working in IoT initiatives. We have launched an IoT platform in South Africa with local operator MTN and many operators have already expressed interest in this platform.”
ZTEsoft is a subsidiary of ZTE Corporation, which specializes in the provision of BSS/OSS solutions to global operators of wireless, wireline and broadband cable services. ZTEsoft’s ZSmart solutions have been deployed by operators in more than 70 countries worldwide.
In related news, ZTE has unveiled an IoT application to target municipal governments in partnership with local mobile telco China Mobile. The smart well cover solution monitors the status of the well cover, and its alarm reports in real-time if the cover is being moved or opened.
ZTE said that the narrow-band (NB) IoT technology broadens the coverage of the smart well cover monitoring system, eliminating blind angles and reducing building and maintenance costs.
Both ZTE and China Mobile had announced their cooperation on joint 5G innovation during MWC Barcelona this year, and officially signed a cooperation memorandum in March.
Both companies planned to establish a joint 5G innovation center, focusing on the development of 5G, IoT, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), smart manufacturing, and virtual reality.
“The two companies have made substantial progress on their cooperation in the IoT and 5G fields. In the future, further technological achievements will promote the rapid development of the industry chain,” ZTE said in a release. “ZTE has always been a major promoter of NB-IoT technology. It forges end-to-end (E2E) solutions based on NB-IoT for operators and the telecoms industry, and actively participates in the research of chips, terminals, systems and the IoT platform.”
