AT&T has taken the wraps off of a new project in partnership with Cisco, which will result in no fewer than two pilot programs for Smart City technologies in Portland. At the center of the pilots is the company’s AT&T Smart Cities Operations Center (SCOC), which is meant to act as a versatile hub for city managers and leaders. That central dashboard will utilize information taken from a variety of sensors and sources and the system will feature full integration of Cisco Kinetic for Cities. Cisco’s platform will, according to the announcement, simplify the process of adding various solutions for collecting and transferring all of the data to be collected. Moreover, it will enable that data to be transported to and from devices, applications, and services that were previously isolated. The goal of the pilots is to demonstrate how the partnership and its technological innovations can bridge the gap between connected devices, citizens, and leaders. The companies want to show how operations within the city can be simplified, new revenue sources can be discovered, and leaders can be more responsive while maintaining the security of that data.
With regard to the specifics of those pilots, AT&T’s pilots won’t be entirely different from other smart city projects that have been cropping up over the last several months. The two solutions to be used include AT&T Smart Cities Digital Infrastructure and AT&T Smart Cities Structure Monitoring. The former will be powered by Current, driven GE’s CityIQ and will focus on the use of existing lighting-related infrastructure. Sensors will be incorporated into parts of the city to show how that infrastructure can become its own data network to address traffic flow and parking issues using computer vision analytics provided by Intel IoT tech. Around 200 such setups are set to be deployed across the Central Eastside area of the city. Meanwhile, AT&T Structure Monitoring – linked in with IBM IoT Cloud, IBM Services, and Moniteye – will be deployed on several infrastructure points with LTE enabled. The purpose of those sensors will be to monitor structural behaviors related to temperature, tilting, cracks, and more. Alert triggers will be enabled to monitor structural reaction to various events.
While no specifics have been provided yet for when the pilot projects are to start, the company also announced several new members to its Smart Cities Strategic Alliance. Previously the alliance only featured prominent members such as Cisco, IBM, and Intel. Synchronoss and Ubicquia bring two very different advantages to future implementations of AT&T’s smart city efforts. Synchronoss brings cloud, messaging, and digital products to enhance management of devices, nodes, and data, as well as experience in dealing with complex data in IoT environments. Ubicquia brings in its own experience with cost-efficient, expandable platforms in industries tied to simply connected, simply smart broadband, small cell and smart city service. AT&T says the plug-and-play nature of Ubicquia’s offerings can turn street lights into a multi-function router to support services associated with smart lighting controls, public Wi-Fi, and other sensors making up the smart city IoT solution. Finally, the company revealed that it will be showing off some of the related technologies at the AT&T booth at MWC 2018 – booth 4D30 – though no specifics were provided there either.