Sevana: AT&T: Smart cities are the future

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The United Nations estimates that in the next 15 years the number of people living in cities globally will reach 5 billion. The first time in all of recorded history the urban population has reached this high, it will also be the first time ever that urban populations outnumber rural ones. Growing populations and diminishing resources have led to several metropolitan governments, private organizations and even the U.S. government to embrace the idea of smart cities.

AT&T has begun its own investment into the field of smart cities technology. To learn more about AT&T’s efforts, RCR Wireless News sat down with Mike Zeto, general manager of the AT&T Smart Cities Organization.

“It’s a real exciting time for AT&T. We’ve had a lot of success over the years in the Internet of Things area of our business. We are the leader in the U.S., and some would say globally, as the provider for Internet of Things solutions for telecommunications. The natural progression of that is to move into vertical areas that use underlying Internet of Things technologies and communication solution’s like smart cities.”

Zeto explained how AT&T has formed a dedicated organization under his direction within AT&T’s IoT business unit to develop smart city technologies. Zeto said the approach is to look for multi-faceted ways to develop smart infrastructure, “looking at ways we can drive smart city applications that can solve problems for the cities and the citizens.” The technologies that Zeto and his colleges are developing are modular so the tech can serve a variety of different purposes across multiple systems, including sanitation, traffic control and public safety.

These systems include smart lighting, a system that uses an app to view and manage lights remotely. With smart parking, parking garages have lights that only turn on when a car approaches. Smart traffic signals organize traffic flow based on the number of vehicles and pedestrian. Public safety sensors, such as gunfire detection technology, lets law enforcement know where a shooting occurred, rounds fired and number of people involved. Smart buildings, structures with motion sensor lights, can dim or shut off when a room is empty, while water meters can alert maintenance of leaking pipes and electric meters monitor energy use and alert when it reaches a specific threshold.

These systems are designed to save money and energy and help them deliver services more efficiently. However, Zeto noted that his unit cannot build a smart city alone. “There’s a lot of partners that need to come together to create a successful solution. AT&T is one of them and I feel like we have the ability to lead large alliances and drive successful IoT ecosystems because we have long standing relationships with cities as a technology provider going back fifty years.”

Zeto is upbeat on the prospect of increased investment, both public and private, in smart cities technologies, pointing out that the U.S. government has recently committed $160 million for investment in smart cities. “I think that $160 million will help to fund and seed some of the growth so the technology providers can start to test and quantify what the benefits of (smart cities) technologies will be.”

Zeto is also adamant that AT&T takes the concerns of cyber security for these systems they are developing very seriously. He explained that security is at the forefront of their design process and said, “Frankly we’re doing a lot of our investment around security. We feel and we know based on testing and our position in the market we have the most secure scalable network that’s out there today.”

Zeto doesn’t foresee the move toward smart cities reversing: “Many cities both large and small, as well as research universities, have started to lead the way in looking at these solutions.”

Zeto went on to say, “It will take a while to roll out solutions in a building block approach and get them to scale. Were at the beginning of a journey and that’s something everybody needs to keep in mind.”

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