Smart Technologies

Cities throughout the U.S. are adopting smart technologies that help to improve the quality of life for residents and businesses. From smart traffic programs that relieve congestion and shorten commute times to smart city street lighting that reduces power consumption while improving public safety, smart technologies are transforming the way that cities manage services and conduct business.

The key to implementing smart technologies effectively is investing in an infrastructure that can connect and support them effectively. Many cities begin their transition to smart technologies with investment in individual solutions that meet pressing needs: smart parking technology to solve drivers’ woes, smart building technology to reduce energy consumption, video surveillance to reduce crime, and so on. While spending money on specific smart technologies that deliver immediate benefits is compelling, adopting a broader, long-term strategy for building an underlying infrastructure may prove the wiser investment.

Connecting and powering smart technologies

Most smart city solutions are built on the same smart city framework. This includes:

• Smart cities IoT devices and sensors that collect data.
• High-performance networks that transmit data.
• Software analytics platforms that aggregate and transform data.
• Interfaces that communicate data intelligence to users.

When smart technologies are implemented by various departments independently of each other, inefficiency and redundancy is inevitable. The cost and ownership of different smart technologies is broken up among different departments and budgets, resulting in a disjointed collection of smart technologies, multiple vendor relationships and lots of redundant infrastructure.

By taking time to plan for a common infrastructure and lay a foundation that can support and connect all new smart technologies as they come online, cities can reap enormous benefits: greater cost-savings over time, easier integration and interoperability of smart technologies, simpler management, and more insightful intelligence that is the result of multiple systems that can talk to and inform one another.

Spectrum Enterprise connectivity enables smart technologies

For cities intent on developing unified infrastructure for smart technologies, Spectrum Enterprise is positioned to be the ideal partner. As a leading provider of connectivity solutions for enterprises and local governments, Spectrum Enterprise has already laid the infrastructure foundation required to connect and support smart technologies. Spectrum has built a two-way, fully interactive digital fiber network that spans more than 840,000 miles of network infrastructure throughout the U.S. Fiber Internet Access enables 50 million homes and businesses to access smart technologies with gigabit connections. Over 350,000 Spectrum WiFi hotspots throughout the country provide wireless users with connectivity that will soon increase to 1 Gbps. And Spectrum Mobile is built on one of the nation’s largest LTE cellular networks, enhancing mobile connectivity nationwide.

No one vendor can provide solutions that encompass the entire stack of smart technologies, but Spectrum Enterprise has partnered with a variety of vendors to provide cities with a comprehensive and unified vendor ecosystem. Rather than working with multiple vendors, solutions and contracts, cities can invest in a single relationship with Spectrum Enterprise that covers all aspects of smart infrastructure.

Learn more about Spectrum Smart Cities at www.spectrumsmartcities.com.