Take a smart approach

to building a smart city

NORTH AMERICA
By Sean Kinney

JUNE 2016

JUNE 2019

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 FEATURE REPORT
Introduction
We are currently going through one
of the most significant periods of
urbanization in history. According
to United Nations research, around
55% of the global population lives
in metropolitan areas and that’s ex-
pected to increase to 68% in the next
three decades. In the coming years,
as the population of urban centers
swells to more than 2.5 billion peo-
ple, civil leaders are faced with
a number of issues ranging from
transportation and public safety to
digital inclusion and pollution.
Enter the concept of smart cities
wherein technology is used to solve
these problems, fostering dense,
user-friendly urban environments
rather than cramped, crowded
wastelands. While the future of
smart cities is often pinned to the
emergence of 5G, there’s no need
to wait. Without a doubt, 5G will
enhance smart city efforts but as
pilot projects and scaled deploy-
ments show today, city leaders can
make significant strides today. But
it takes careful planning, strategic
thinking and buy-in from an array
of stakeholders. Here we examine
smart city developments in the U.S.,
including key use cases, the tech-
nology that goes into them and how
2
private companies can best engage
with the public sector.
Do smart cities need 5G?
“Smart cities” is most certainly a
nebulous term. At a high-level, it
refers to a collection of use cases,
things like public Wi-Fi, informa-
tion kiosks, responsive lighting,
traffic management, etc…, that,
individually and collectively, can
make a city more efficient, sustain-
able, accessible and all around more
attractive to residents. From a tech-
nology standpoint, the use cases
have commonalities like wired and
wireless connectivity, sensors that
take in a variety of data points and
the compute infrastructure to ana-
lyze the data and initiate an action.
But, to the connectivity point, is the
success of smart cities, as singular
investments and as an overarching
ambition needed in response to mass
urbanization, dependent on 5G?
5G is available to a limited extent
in the United States, South Korea,
Britain, Switzerland and a few
other countries as of the fourth
quarter of 2018. While operators
have made clear the intention to
scale out networks and services, it
will take time before there’s ubiq-
uitous coverage and consistent
experiences available around
the world. And there’s still more
standardization and development
work needed before 5G can fully
support the three primary use cas-
es pinned to it--enhanced mobile
broadband, massive machine-type
communication and ultra reliable
low latency communications. So, in
short, 5G is here today but it’s not
everywhere and won’t be for some
time; yet smart city projects have
been underway for years. So, is 5G
a requirement for a smart city?
No. But will 5G serve as a major
enabler for smart cities? Yes, par-
ticularly in terms of supporting up
to a million connected devices per
square kilometer, a major enhance-
ment as compared to LTE. But this
is somewhat paradoxical given the
realities of what we’re seeing on
the ground in terms of smart city
investments. Limited pilot projects
have proven very difficult to scale.
So if there were hundreds of thou-
sands of sensors blanketing an ur-
ban core in service of a smart city
project, 5G would be the way to go,
but, for the most part, that’s not
the case anywhere.
Regardless of what the smart city
project is, “It’s all about connectiv-
ity,” Morné Erasmus, director of

“It’s all about connecting
IoT devices, getting some
insight into whatever the
applications are and then
driving efficiencies higher.
All of that happens through
connectivity.”
Morné Erasmus, Director of Smart
Cities, CommScope
smart cities for CommScope, said.
“If you look at it in the simplest
form, it’s all about connecting IoT
devices, getting some insight into
whatever the applications are and
then driving efficiencies higher.
All of that happens through con-
nectivity. You need to connect edge
devices back to the cloud, scrub
the data and improve your process.
That’s what ‘smart’ is all about. The
fundamental layer is connectivity.”
“Where we’re getting traction
is with the base hits, rather
than coming in with this global
dashboard for the whole city.
Our approach is to make
elements of the city smarter.”
Ken Hosac, Vice President
of Iot Strategy and Business
Development, Cradlepoint
How to sell a smart city
Before diving into how to im-
plement a smart city project, it’s
important to understand how to
sell a smart city solution set--the
public sector is markedly differ-
ent in organization and operation
the more traditional telecom buy-
ers like carriers, enterprises and
industrial interests. Departmental
silos, coupled with hired leadership
(police chiefs, city managers, etc..)
FEATURE REPORT
alongside elected leaders on the
city council, and stringent budget-
ary oversight mechanisms, make
this a challenging sales cycle.
Another factor here is the grand
smart city vision versus the smart
city reality. The grand vision--”try-
ing to boil the ocean,” as Erasmus
described it--sounds and looks
great but when it comes to culti-
vating inter-departmental consen-
sus and translating that into mul-
tiple budget allocations toward
a sweeping goal, it’s better to go
after base hits rather than a grand
slams as Ken Hosac, Cradlepoint’s
vice president of IoT strategy and
business development, said.
“Where we’re getting traction is
with the base hits, rather than com-
ing in with this global dashboard
for the whole city” Hosac told RCR
Wireless News. “That’s expensive
and it has to go all the way up to
the city council to get approved.
Our approach is to make elements
of the city smarter. We’re making
police cars smarter,” for example.
He continued: “One of the key
things to recognize about the peo-
ple within these cities is they have
a pretty thankless job. The expec-
tations that the population have
for the city just continue to go up
3
 FEATURE REPORT
and up and up. But their budgets
don’t grow consistently. They’re
being asked to do more with less.
So you help them find ways to im-
prove productivity.”
In an effort to more effective-
ly break open departmental silos,
some cities are centralizing the
decision making that goes into de-
veloping and executing smart city-
type project. In Dallas, Texas, for
instance, the city earlier this year
hired Laila Alequresh to serve as
the first ever chief innovation of-
ficer. City Manager T.C. Broadnax
said the goal is to take a macro view
of the cities innovation strategy
and described Alequresh’s role as
“critical in formulating non-tradi-
tional approaches and solutions to
better address the challenges of our
city and residents.”
For her part, Alequresh, former-
ly an executive advisor to Los An-
geles’s mayor, sees as role as being
responsive to the needs of Dallas
residents. “I believe government
leaders should always listen to the
public first when establishing a
strategy to improve performance
and the quality of life for residents.
It’s a key part of a holistic approach
for making sure city initiatives
have high-quality performance
4
outcomes and maintain a service
first outlook.”
Hosac said this approach makes
it easier to bring smart city proj-
ects to life. He gave the example
of an engagement with the city of
Boise, Idaho, where Cradlepoint
is headquartered. “Through their
CIO, we sat down with their entire
IT department that covers all the
other departments. They put up a
big screen with their list of projects
and we went slide by slide, looking
at every ask that came from the
particular departments.” This lead
to creative problem solving, he said.
Erasmus said he’s encouraged to
see the move toward creation of
CIOs and similar positions focused
on municipally-led digital efforts.
“The trend is definitely toward
urbanization,” he said. “They have
to do more with less resources. One
way is by leveraging technology. If
you can leverage those foundation-
al infrastructure investments, you
can start to share it between traf-
fic, safety, police and also private
enterprise. I think that’s where
you’ll start seeing smarter cities
get traction.”
Back to the productivity point,
Cradlepoint has seen strong
take in the public safety market,
particularly selling its routers to
police departments. The idea is,
rather than having to go back to
headquarters or precinct offices to
fill out paperwork, officers can use
in-car connectivity to do it in the
field, which keeps them on their
beats and saves transit time. That
same connectivity, coupled with
some sensors, can, in just one exam-
ple, detect when an officer removes
a shotgun from its rack in the trunk.
Once triggered, that sensor can
alert staff in an operations center
who can then tap into the vehicle’s
cameras to assess the situation.
“That’s these base hits,” Hosac
said. “You’re solving solving a spe-
cific problem for the city and that
department will get a lot of at-
tention from other departments. I
think that’s a great way to build up
grass roots impact within the city.
Frankly, that’s how we’ve built our
entire business...identifying specif-
ic use cases.”
When a street light is more than a
street light
There’s no master list of smart
city use cases primarily because, in
the right context, nearly anything
could contribute to a smart city.
However, some of the major ones
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 FEATURE REPORT

that have seen strong adoption in-
clude vehicular connectivity for
police cars, school buses and the
like; security cameras for public
safety; transportation-focused ini-
tiatives like digital signage at bus
stops and interactive kiosks for
more streamlined access to transit
information; public Wi-Fi hot spots;
and smart lighting.
Let’s take a closer look at smart
lighting for a moment. Most any
city needs street lighting, and
street lighting infrastructure
needs to be replaced incremental-
ly. During upgrade cycles, increas-
ingly inexpensive LED lights can
be installed to cut back on overall
energy consumption; similarly, sen-
sors can be layered in so the lights
are only on when they need to be.
“For a lot of cities, that’s the first
thing they touch,” Erasmus said,
noting a clear cut path to return on
investment, generally in the three
to four year range.
In fact, the business case for
smart lighting is quite bright. Juni-
controls. To break that down, U.K.-
based provider Telensa figures a
cost reduction of around 50% sim-
ply by switching to LED; layering
in the sensors can contribute an ad-
ditional 20% to 25% cost reduction.
Juniper forecasts the number of
connected street lights will grow on
average by 42% per year amounting
to around 70 million units by 2023.
Similarly, ABI Research predicts
annual revenue from smart street
lights will grow at a compound an-
nual growth rate of 31% to $1.7 bil-
lion in 2026.
Here’s the interesting thing about
light poles--as a one-off use case, con-
verting to LEDs and smart controls
is a smart city application with a
clear benefit and business case. But,
given that light poles are generally
in trafficked areas, connected to
power (and in some cases fiber), and
capable of supporting additional
smart city-type equipment, a street
light isn’t just a street light.
Echoing Erasmus’ comment, Ju-
niper Research author Steffen Sor-
rell said the associated cost savings
“mean that many cities will look to
this as a first-stage smart city proj-
ect. Choosing an open platform will
be key here, as additional services
can be launched from the same
point, while simultaneously driving
up third-party vendor competition.”
Image courtesy of AT&T

per Research projects smart light-

ing investments can save cities $15
billion in energy costs between now
and 2023. That figure contemplates
both the switch to LED bulbs as
well as the responsive, automated

6

In San Jose, California, AT&T is
working with the city on a street
light project that’s more than a
street light project. The estimated
$1 million deal is geared toward
efficiency gains for the city, better
lighting, improved public safety
and helping bridge the digital di-
vide through connectivity. AT&T
installed 670 controllers and 550
LEDs on existing street lighting
infrastructure, as well as around
100 Wi-Fi extenders and digital in-
frastructure nodes, which attach
to the poles and serve as a platform
for multiple other types of sensors.
The nodes are integrated into a sin-
gle piece of hardware with baked-
in edge computing. This can be used
to study traffic patterns, pedestri-
an behaviour, parking and for envi-
ronmental monitoring.
AT&T VP Mike Zeto, general man-
ager of smart cities, said of the San
Jose project, “By taking a program-
matic approach to smart cities de-
ployments, cities can truly optimize
Image courtesy of AT&T
their investments in technology.
Our smart lighting controllers will
help San Jose reduce energy usage
and improve efficiencies across the
city--a win for the community and
the environment.”
Additional smart city uses cases
Let’s extend this idea of connect-
ing a smart city asset to serve an
immediate use case, then build
from there. Instead of street lights,
consider the humble bus. In New
York City, transit officials want-
ed to let passengers pay their fare
with a credit or debit card, which
requires mobile connectivity.
But that’s just the tip of the ice-
berg, Hosac explained, noting Cra-
dlepoint products are present in
some 5,000 New York City buses
traversing Manhattan, Brooklyn
and Queens. “If you think about a
FEATURE REPORT
bus, there are a variety of applica-
tions within the bus that need that
connectivity.” Beyond the point of
sale piece, “The bus of the future
has digital signage on the outside
to advertise to people on the street
[also a revenue generator that can
offset capex costs]. You have digital
signage on the inside which is tar-
geted at passengers with ads, bus
information and perhaps live route
maps. You have passenger Wi-Fi,
which has really been proven to in-
crease ridership.”
Then there’s also a surveillance
angle. Cellular can be used to con-
nect cameras pointed at the driver,
the passengers and the door. In fact,
Hosac said, “Buses in London have
more than 20 cameras and they’re
recording cars going by, actually do-
ing license plate recognition. They
have cameras pointed at the wheel
7
 FEATURE REPORT
wells because they had a problem
with insurance fraud there with
people pretending the bus ran over
their foot. That bus environment...
there’s a lot going on there.”
Another bus use case: Hosac
shared the story of a young girl
that was kidnapped in Santa Clara,
California. Authorities issued an
Amber Alert and facial recogni-
tion built into city buses identified
potential profiles of the suspected
kidnapper. That information was
used to prompt panic alerts from
drivers and a suspect was quickly
apprehended.
And another: The Coachella Val-
ley School District in Riverside, Cal-
ifornia, is one of the poorest in the
nation. While companies are eager
8
to subsidize laptops or tablets for
students to use in an effort to im-
prove educational outcomes, what
about the connectivity piece for
students who don’t have reliable
access to the internet at home? Cra-
dlepoint worked with the district
to install routers in school buses so
students could connect. “Someone
in the school district decided to
drive buses out into the neighbor-
hoods, lock the door and set up pic-
nic tables so students would have
internet connections to do their
homework.”
“The theme here,” Hosac said, “is
these are all individual projects
within a city that have a signifi-
cant impact and fairly quick return
on investment.”
Connectivity in smart cities
CommScope, Erasmus said, sees
three primary “building blocks”
of a smart city: a smart building, a
smart community, then the macro
level that emerges when those two
are linked together as a whole. “We
always talk about smart buildings,
communities or campuses and then
the city. It really starts with the
building–enabling connectivity
within the building. Connectivity
today is a utility. If you can’t get
a cellphone signal or an internet
connection in a building, people
are not moving to those buildings.
That’s just part of what life is today.
It starts there then, when you walk
outside the building, you need the
same coverage there.”
In terms of outdoor coverage,
Erasmus said CommScope is seeing
city-led RFP activity around met-
ro cell poles for small cell place-
ment. “Traditionally that business
for us is driven by operators or the
neutral hosts but we’re starting to
see that shift a little bit” to cities
and utility providers. “They have
their own right-of-way on power
poles and they’re looking to get
into that business.”
And, given the complexities asso-
ciated with multiple carriers siting
 Featured Companies
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radio equipment, this is a prudent
approach to streamlining an other-
wise complex (costly and time-con-
suming) process while still meeting
the goals of the various stakeholders.
While shared infrastructure mod-
els have gained traction in some
global markets, particularly South
Korea where the three operators
shared 5G deployment costs and
China where the three carriers en-
tered into a joint venture for the
purposes of deploying and manag-
ing infrastructure, that approach is
not as well-developed in the U.S.
But, he said, “I think there’s slowly
10
some tides changing there. The only
way cities can control their own
destiny is to say, ‘OK, what if we
own the infrastructure. We become
a neutral host.’”
Conclusion
If you want to build a smart city, be
smart about. By all means develop
a holistic strategy that touches on
multiple departments and multiple,
long-term goals. But break that up
into projects that make incremental
financial sense and, once put togeth-
er, add up to more than the sum of
their parts. And remember: behind
Image courtesy of Commscope
any successful smart city project
is connectivity, but not necessarily
5G. Wireless and wired networks in
place today are perfectly capable of
supporting a wide variety of smart
city use cases. But to get to that
grand vision--a city with autono-
mous transportation, real-time ac-
cess to digitized services, augment-
ed reality information overlays, and
proactive data-driven public safety,
5G will be a must.
Editor’s note: This report includes additional
reporting from James Blackman, editor in chief
of Enterprise IoT Insights, an Arden Media
Company publication.
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11
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