Opportunities

Provide smart cities with connected solutions for various types of access networks and applications

Opportunities

Smart cities' first successes, such as those of Florida Power & Light (4.8Millions connected meters, 0.5Million connected streetlights) or Dongguan (0.2Million connected streetlights) have shown IoT technologies' tremendous potential in terms of operational efficiency. However, Smart city solutions trigger a new value chain, whose connectivity complexity has often been underestimated.

Today’s reality

The management of cities' utilities through IoT, whether it be waste, traffic or lighting, is barely emergent. Very few cities (as for example Barcelona) have implemented full smart city solutions even if the benefits for the citizen are tangible with more efficient public services and a lower carbon footprint.

Smart city connected objects could be as diverse as outdoor lighting controllers, electric, water and gas meters, parking occupation sensors, Doppler radar sensors, traffic light sensors, fire panels, etc.

For each application, return on investment is extremely sensitive with respect to the characteristics and price of the wireless communication model carrying the data. Many kinds of networks will have to co-exist: LoRA, mesh network, cellular networks, etc.

So far, IoT penetration in smart cities has been slowed down by the following factors

A limited offer of proprietary solutions due to the lack of interoperable and open standards

The complexity of deployment, with a too high cost of devices and communication

The difficulty to select partners, with an emerging value chain

The limited choice of devices: standard devices have to be transformed into secure connectable smart devices

Business opportunity

As a consequence, there is a new position in the value chain and huge business opportunities to provide connected solutions for various types of access networks and applications. These connectivity solutions allow the device manufacturers to answer all the cities tenders, whatever the adopted solution is, while maintaining their time to market.

Complex solutions have
to prove their interoperability

New feature need to be introduced
during the whole life cycle of the
solution

Security and simplicity of
deployment has to be ensured

1.15 bn smart devices will be installed in 2024