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2018 Global Smart Cities - Planning for a Sustainable Future - Analysis and Trends

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Last updated: 22 Nov 2018 Update History

Report Status: Archived

Report Pages: 133

Analyst: Kylie Wansink

Publication Overview

This report provides valuable insights into the Smart and Connected cities which are slowly emerging around the world. Smart cities require many components working in unison and the ICT sector is at the forefront of the innovative developments emerging to support our future cities and Smart communities. This BuddeComm report examines the core components of Smart cities, supported by statistics and examples. Subjects include:

  • Analysis of the Smart City transformation;
  • Key components of smart cities including Smart Transport;
  • Global IoT and M2M market;
  • Global fixed broadband infrastructure;
  • Global mobile broadband infrastructure.

Researchers:- Kylie Wansink.
Current publication date:- November 2018 (7th Edition)

Executive Summary

High-speed broadband infrastructure plays an important role in Smart Cities

With the majority of citizens living in urban centres around the world, there has been a growing interest in ensuring these highly concentrated populations are living in the most sustainable and efficient environments possible.

Smart Cities offer the ability to manage our growing populations and the limited resources and environmental issues we face. In addition there is the potential to provide important social services and utilities both more efficiently and at a higher quality.

Smart city planning requires a holistic view and the co-ordination and support from many different sectors including government, private enterprise, energy industry, healthcare industry, transport and ICT sector – just to name a few.

Smart grids, together with fixed broadband infrastructure based on Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH), are one the key elements of smart cities. New technologies such as 4½ G (LTE-A) and 5G are also going to play a key role in the providing the underlying infrastructure required to advance smart cities.

It is timely to consider how important it is to get the underlying infrastructure right in order to provide the foundation for the development of smart cities – and this is where the telecommunications industry comes into play.

There are the enormous developments occurring for the Internet of Things (IoT) movement with spending in this area alone expected to grow substantially over the next 4-5 years. Already billions of devices around the world are connected and emerging Artificial Intelligence developments will benefit from a highly connected environment.

Look towards 2019, we can see there are a number of countries showing leadership in smart city development and many of these also have extensive high-speed fixed and mobile broadband networks in place. Investments in telecommunications infrastructure along with machine-to-machine and IoT initiatives are paramount for these cities and countries to quickly progress towards our smart nations of the future.

BuddeComm has been monitoring smart city developments for many years and this report provides valuable insights into the ongoing transition towards our smart communities of the future. The report provides information on the key components of smart cities and identifies the countries which are showing leadership in this regard.

The report includes analysis and statistics on the fixed and mobile broadband infrastructure sectors as this is a core component required for smart cities to evolve. In addition, the report provides valuable insights and statistics on developments relating to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications as these interconnection abilities are also crucial to smart city development.

Key developments:

  • Growing energy consumption will create increased in competition and managing resources and energy efficiency will become very important.
  • Global spending on IoT will reach over US$1 trillion in the next few years.
  • China is earmarked as a global leader in many aspects of developments relating to smart cities.
  • Shipments of mobile IoT devices are increasing at a rapid rate.
  • Asia represents the largest region in terms of IoT spending.
  • In terms of broadband access technologies - FttX now accounts for the largest market share worldwide.
  • LTE technology is expected to carry most of the mobile traffic for at least the next decade - alongside a slow transition to 5G.

Kylie Wansink
November 2018

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