The physical expansion of cities is adding immense pressure on energy resources, environment, infrastructure, sanitation, health, public funds and other basic utilities. Cities are facing challenges such as congestion and pollution, while inflated real estate prices and a lack of access to affordable housing are leading to a sense of instability. In developing and growing cities, governments are struggling to match the city infrastructure to accommodate the rapidly growing population. Cities with a declining rate of growth, and consequently declining tax revenues, are forced to deal with obsolete infrastructure and obsolete systems. In addition, cities have complicated political structures that enable each department to deploy point solutions that are not compatible with systems deployed by other departments. Since the budgets and reporting structure are complicated and managed by departments, there is an inherent lack of cohesion in decision making and technology deployment.

Therefore, it has become imperative that city growth be addressed in a centralized manner where planning and investment caters to the evolving lifestyle of current and future inhabitants. Each city should be viewed as the community’s hub of investment, wealth creation, and economic growth. Every city will be highly unique in its infrastructure demands offering cross-sector micro implications and opportunities for a variety of stakeholders. In this centralized environment, the “Smart City” concept has emerged. But what exactly is a Smart City?

A city achieves Smart City status when it deploys technology that enables centralize monitoring and control of active and passive infrastructure in order to improve operational efficiency, durability, and public safety. A Smart City goes beyond just automating and optimizing infrastructure, but ties in other sectors of City operations including public safety, parks and recreation, eGovernment, integration with businesses and residents and much more.

A city achieves Smart City status when it deploys technology that enables centralize monitoring and control of active and passive infrastructure in order to improve operational efficiency, durability, and public safety. A Smart City goes beyond just automating and optimizing infrastructure, but ties in other sectors of City operations including public safety, parks and recreation, eGovernment, integration with businesses and residents and much more

The benefits of becoming a Smart City are numerous and significant, including:

• Increasing the quality of life for residents of the city: This can be achieved through improved infrastructure, increased safety & security, investments in public transportation, reduced pollution, etc. An increase in quality of life has a direct impact on net migration for a city. Businesses and individuals typically move to cities for the quality of life, leading to increased revenue base for a city.
• Increasing the tax base of a city: With an increased quality of life, technology investments will aid cities by increasing net migration, resulting in an increased tax base (business and individual). In addition to increased collection of income taxes, smart cities typically see a pronounced increase in sales tax revenue and property taxes (both from increased home ownership and increase in property values).
• Reducing environmental impact: One of the biggest benefits of smart city deployments is in reducing the environmental impact by a city. Reductions in energy costs (from using more environmentally friendly lighting solutions) to reducing pollution (with a robust public transportation system), the benefits of reducing the environmental footprint of a city results in more people calling a city “home” for longer periods of time.
• Fiscal Responsibility: By investing in smart city technologies, cities can generate higher operation incomes from toll collection, city-wide connectivity, taxes, tourism, etc. This helps cities manage their budgets more effectively and generate revenues to further invest in improving the quality of life for residents.
• Operational Efficiency: In addition to increasing revenues in a city, a smart city deployment has the potential to reduce waste and save cities money. By adhering to smart city frameworks, cities can develop comprehensive solutions that cut across the needs of multiple departments and eliminate wasted investments in point solutions. This helps cities in reallocating budgets toward increasing the quality of life and making the city government operate more efficiently.

A2D Value Proposition

Smart City Public-Private Partnership

There are hundreds of companies that are competing to help cities establish a Smart City ecosystem. From systems integrators to independent software vendors to application-specific product manufacturers, the list is endless of potential partners that are seeking contracts to deploy smart city solutions and hand it off to the city to manage. However, most cities, even the largest among us, don’t have the technical and/or operational capacity to manage and sustain Smart City systems let alone have the long-term fiscal ability to expand as the city grows. To overcome this burden, many cities are now turning to telecommunication providers to assist in developing their smart city system. However, city managers are starting to realize that there is an inherent conflict of interest having their incumbent provider implement and manage their Smart City ecosystem. This is because the same provider, who already charges the city to connect their existing facilities, is also trying to profit off of providing the city with connectivity to the multitude of smart city devices and systems. All of which becomes more and more expensive as the city’s smart city network grows.

To overcome this inevitable dimensioning return, A2D is able to offer the same technical and operational benefit as the incumbent provider while also offering a true public-private partnership that does not create a potential conflict in the future. Below is a small list of the direct benefits an A2D Smart City Partnership provides:

• Technical Capacity: A2D already operates its network utilizing an in-house network operations center that has the capacity to manage many different forms of connectivity—from fixed-line to LTE to WiFi to private networks. This particular skill set is critical for the operation and management of several communication networks managed by a city with their smart city deployments. Connectivity is the cornerstone of successful smart city deployments, which makes A2D an ideal partner.
• Reliability: A2D is developing a national fiber network. Our homogeneous all-fiber network is a critical piece of a smart city deployment, especially in a disaster scenario. Network uptime is critical to emergency response and recovery of a city during unforeseen events wherein A2D can mirror and move the city’s critical data to/from multiple secure, offsite Disaster Recovery Data Centers in order to ensure each city remains connected. A2D’s network management team will help city managers and IT directors coordinate emergency response with local law enforcement and federal agencies to ensure secure information sharing and exchange even if the city’s local network systems have been damaged. As an integrated member of the community, A2D will serve as a reliable network operator of the City’s network ecosystem and will pool all of its network management staff to serve as an extension of the city’s technical staff to help it stay connected even during disasters.
• Relationships with different levels of city and municipal government: A2D is developing deep and wide relationships with different levels in city and municipal government (from mayors and city council members down to IT analysts within different departments). This enables A2D to bring together different stakeholders across different smart city deployments—to help city leaders discuss lessons learned on how to facilitate their own project and solution integration across political silos and extracting incremental value for citizens. In addition, A2D is working closely with both public and private financial stakeholders to help cities finance the cost of executing complex deployments and in turn, share their experience with other cities seeking to deploy their own smart city ecosystem.
• Joint Investment and Return: A2D’s public-private partnership model is designed to enable our city partners to underwrite the development of their smart city network as part of a long-term expansion of a city-wide open access network. At the core of a smart city network is the city’s wide area network (WAN) which is traditionally owned and operated by the city’s incumbent phone and cable provider. A2D’s P3 model enables the city to underwrite the development of a replacement WAN by leveraging the existing monthly expense of paying for the incumbent provider to provide WAN services. As part of developing the City’s WAN, A2D would also establish a private WAN that enables multiple providers to compete to provide broadband services to city residents and businesses. As A2D’s private open access network is expanded, using private financing, A2D shares in the revenue with the city. The revenue share with the city couple with A2D’s network expansion enables the city to add onto the network's smart city connections without impacting city budgets. As a result, there is a quadruple-win: the city reduces operational cost while benefiting from an infinitely expanded smart city ecosystem, the community gets enhanced broadband services and choice, providers are able to compete to provide services and/or upsell existing customers, and A2D is able to expand its national open access fiber network footprint.

For more information on how A2D can help your community become a Smart City, contact us directly at smartcity@a2dinc.com