The ICT behind cities of the future

Smart Cities are an innovative concept that can improve people’s lives, while also helping the planet. The communications industry has the experience and capabilities to make city living more efficient.

"Our flexible and secure streaming control capability ensures service stability and an improved user experience."

Cities are growing like never before. Already, 50 percent of the world’s people live in cities. Asia is home to half of this population, and by 2025, more than 1.3 billion people will be added to urban areas, with nearly 400 million in India and China alone.

Smart Cities will help make this growth sustainable. The concept uses information and communications technology (ICT) to improve the services that support urban dwelling – security, healthcare, and transport for citizens; improved and more cost effective power supply for industries; remote working and e-commerce for businesses; and entertainment and communications for individuals.

Smart City technology can also help to reduce the environmental impact of urbanization. ICT can be used to monitor energy consumption and emissions across sectors, to improve accountability in the use of energy and carbon. It can offer new ways of operating, learning, living, working and travelling, and help apply smart and integrated approaches to the energy management of systems and processes.

With these tools, the ICT sector could reduce its own CO2 emissions significantly as well as gain financial benefits in the form of new business. ICT can create huge savings of approximately €600 billion through improved energy efficiency across all sectors. The concept is already being put into action in several emerging markets, notably in China, India and the Middle East.

Supporting Smart Cities

Developing Smart Cities will require a unified ICT infrastructure to allow sustainable economic growth. Nokia Siemens Networks recognizes Smart Cities as one of the major global trends in the coming decades and has a comprehensive portfolio of products, solutions and services to meet the needs of cities and their inhabitants. Recently, for example, we launched a suite of energy solutions to help reduce the end-to-end energy use across communications networks.

As well as a wealth of experience in developing and delivering communications infrastructure and applications, Nokia Siemens Networks has a proven environmental record. From evaluation and selection of the equipment, to technical support after the installation – our team of services professionals can help realize the promise of Smart Cities easily and cost effectively.

How communications can help the energy sector

Like communications, energy is a commodity that will always be needed, whatever the state of the economy. Yet, while ICT itself accounts for just 2 percent of all carbon emissions, it has huge potential to help improve the energy efficiency of other sectors. The energy sector is in prime position to use ICT to make power grids more intelligent and more efficient.

Smart meters for today
Smart meters are being rolled out in many countries. Real-time meter readings enable intelligent tariffs in which the energy price depends on actual changes in consumption. Consumers will be billed for their real consumption each month, rather than estimates based on annual use.

“operators can offer not just meter connectivity, but the customer insight capabilities to help utilities provide personalized energy services to their customers. Operators are already set up to do this for their own businesses and can offer packaged solutions or even hosted services,” says Jaakko Aho, Head of Business Incubation, Nokia Siemens Networks.

Power grids will get smarter
Smart Metering is a stepping stone towards smart grids that will bring more transparency to consumers and help utilities to reach compulsory energy efficiency targets. A smart grid is an electricity transmission and distribution network with built in ICT applications to enable real-time management of power flows and to provide the bi-directional metering.

“The communications industry has tremendous experience of managing dynamic networks and systems. As more renewable generation, like wind and solar power, comes on stream, energy companies will need more real-time control over power grids. The communications industry can help to speed smart grid rollouts and reduce the energy industry’s investment,” says Aho.

Managing eMobility in the longer term
Electric cars are often in the news and while many technical issues remain to be resolved, it is clear that eMobility has long-term potential to transform the economy. A convenient customer experience will be essential, for example, vehicle charging from multiple locations and service providers, but with payment and customer service consolidated by a single provider.

“The requirements are akin to roaming in mobile networks with the need to provide user friendly and secure charging mechanisms, identification, and authorization,” Aho comments.

The parallels between the energy and communications industries are remarkable. “These include the need to manage and analyze huge amounts of customer data; for charging and billing according to actual consumption; and for efficient network and service management systems,” says Aho. “The trend of these two industries working together is already happening, and will create a wealth of new opportunities both for the endangered environment and for companies driving innovative solutions. We all need to be more responsible in our use of energy, and ICT can help.”