Page 12 - CT Issue 21
P. 12
Keys to the Smart City 11
Mobile operators offer a standards Creating investment opportunities
based approach
To maximise the potential of smart cities, it is important to create
Proprietary systems are not well suited to long-term engagements an investment environment that encourages the introduction of
and the integration of multiple services. The success of smart cities new concepts and applications that can be monetised and take
services is reliant on the use of open standards. Mobile operators advantage of the city’s evolving status. It may be that the city
understand that data and services need to be open and formatted itself provides funding to potential collaborators, or that it creates
in such a way that they can be shared and read by multiple a working environment designed to attract the right talent. Once
platforms in the city domain. Open standards are the best way of smart cities are up and running, the efficiencies that they can
creating a system in which any stakeholder can participate. Some present to the wider world help bring in investment from new
cities view their smart services as an operating system for which businesses and visitors. Mobile operators are able to work with
external developers can create applications using available data smart cities to create those new opportunities in a variety of ways,
sources. such as creating dedicated services for the city and its citizens
or stimulating innovation in the wider ecosystem, for example,
The Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) alliance is promoting an through start-up and developer programmes.
open smart cities market in which interoperability and standards
boost competitiveness, ensuring smart cities do not suffer from Cities looking to develop smart services can deploy business
vendor lock-in, and can compare themselves like-for-like against models that can be managed through monitoring appropriate
global benchmarks. The European initiative FIWARE, which KPIs. Ranging from subscription-based services to externally
delivers open source software and API specifications for Smart funded propositions, there is a broad range of potential business
Cities services, is a key partner in the OASC. Supported by both models, and smart cities have to find the model that best fits their
Telefónica and Orange, FIWARE is seeking to drive innovation ambitions (see diagram on page 12).
around big data and applications for smart cities.
