Abertis Telecom is promoting new solutions for the smart management of infrastructures and services in cities

Smart City Expo World Congress 2014

Abertis Telecom is promoting new solutions for the smart management of infrastructures and services in cities

• Abertis Telecom presents the largest network in Europe, and the first one to provide coverage for an entire country, dedicated to device connectivity and efficient interaction between objects. The network in question is an LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) based on Sigfox technology, specifically designed to leverage the potential potentialities of the Internet of Things (IoT).
• The operator provides details about the active and passive communication infrastructure management model in Barcelona that will enable the city to deploy its efficiency policies for the management of municipal resources.
• The modular offer of its SmartBrain platform, which integrates all the modules of the “City Operating System”, is also one of the cornerstones of the company’s presence at this Congress.
• Other applications being presented include the pilot test of a network-connected smart parking system for the Internet of Things that has already been deployed in Barcelona’s Les Corts neighbourhood; the Premium services of the largest public Wi-Fi network in Spain; as well as the passive infrastructure management model (roofs and urban fixtures), all of them crucial to forthcoming deployments of greater-bandwidth networks in cities.

Barcelona, November 18, 2014. Abertis Telecom is participating at the Smart City Expo World Congress again. This year, the company renews its commitment to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) solutions that drive the development of cities based on technology applications that improve urban management and mobility, as well as Wi-Fi accessibility and in-city connectivity.

The proposal for this Congress focuses mainly on offering an optimal framework and tools to consolidate a more efficient management model in cities and at the same time provide citizens with public services that improve and facilitate their daily life in the city.

The network of the Internet of Things with Sigfox technology, which was presented at the latest Mobile world Congress, has already been deployed throughout the national network and now has more than 1,200 active sites, making it the largest network dedicated to the IoT in Europe.

It is an LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) network that resolves the problem hindering the deployment of IoT solutions by permitting the use of devices based on batteries for very long periods of time (even for years) and eliminating the need to deploy a network of gateways and repeaters throughout the city, since the sensor communicates directly with the network that has already been deployed.

Abertis Telecom is committed to an urban infrastructure management model in which both active (landline communication networks and wireless networks providing access to the Internet) and passive (roofs and urban fixtures) networks are key to the full development and deployment of the smart city concept.

The applications of Abertis Telecom’s technological solutions render it possible to optimise resources, promote environmental sustainability and furnish data that make it easier for cities to operate and promote their predictive management. Moreover, this city concept is driven by the economic dynamisation of the business fabric and adapts to the new habits and needs of the modern citizen.

Applications related to the mobility and management of a city’s resources are one of the mainstays of the presence of Abertis Telecom at the Smart City Expo World Congress:

• Smart Parking: Abertis Telecom is presenting the technology integrated with the first network dedicated to the IoT deployed in Spain, and which has enabled the Barcelona City Council to open an area of 500 smart parking spaces in the neighbourhood of Les Corts. This is a real field test that enables the Barcelona City Council to analyse the benefits of sensorisation in terms of saving time and fuel, as well as in the reduction of CO₂ This smart parking system is already up and running in cities such as Moscow, Los Angeles, London, San Francisco, Indianapolis or Nice.

The WorldSensing sensors installed in each one of the parking spaces communicate, without the need for additional elements, directly with the IoT-dedicated network based on Sigfox technology deployed by Abertis Telecom. A communications centre belonging to the Barcelona City Council monitors occupation of this parking area in real time and the information will be relayed to drivers by means of a mobile app.

• Smart Waste management & Water metering: Also based on its IoT network, Abertis Telecom is presenting several new cases of the application of this new infrastructure dedicated to the efficient management of services and infrastructures, such as waste management and water-metering solutions. It is also presenting several volumetric, temperature, reading, positioning, etc. sensors, already integrated with Sigfox’s IoT technology.

Premium Wi-Fi: Abertis Telecom is presenting a project developed with Eurona, a reference in Spain and one of the most important in Europe in the field of in-city wireless Internet connectivity and accessibility. Abertis Telecom, in collaboration with the Eurona company, has provided the City Council and the city of Barcelona with Premium and Roaming services following the integration of the City Council’s different Wi-Fi networks in a single network under the name of Barcelona Wi-Fi.

This project is intended to overcome current public Wi-Fi connection limitations in Barcelona, which has legal restrictions imposing a connection speed of 256 kb/second. In contrast, the premium Wi-Fi service will allow the user to contract capacity in excess of 1 and 2 MB/per second on a payment-based modality.

This project seeks to triple the number of operating wireless hotspots in the city, which will rocket from 664 to more than 1500 by 2016. This increased deployment will take the form of the implementation of Wi-Fi in buses, underground stops, gardens and parks, as well as in municipal markets and in the Port of Barcelona. It is the largest state-wide public network and one of the most relevant networks in Europe in terms of size.

The service will cover the demand for Internet access in the capital of Catalonia, with a potential market of 1.6 million citizens and 7.5 million tourists that visit the city every year.

The deployment of more Wi-Fi hotspots in the city will also make it possible to install interactive points through which citizens will be able to access the City Council’s public services and take care of formalities from the street.

• Passive urban infrastructure management model: The Barcelona City Council and Abertis Telecom have designed a new way of leveraging the city’s assets in order to house mobile communications network elements. This involves providing operators, either in the housing modality or in the modality of management and maintenance of small cells, with the most suitable sites in the city (roofs or roof terraces and all types of urban fixtures) for the deployment of their mobile communications networks (3G/4G, Wi-Fi and others). An efficient and market-oriented management that permits effective decision-making by operators (time to market) and generates revenue for the City Council.

The SmartBrain platform: the City Operating System

The SmartBrain platform is Abertis Telecom and Accenture’s response to the need for a city sensor platform that will provide an integrated and transversal tool shared by all public services to the manage all available data (from sensors and actuators, the different public services, companies and organisations, the social media) so that the City Council can improve the management of each and every one of the services rendered in the city and thus facilitate the possibility of developing new services, while also increasing interaction with citizens and visitors.

It is a modular, open, flexible and scalable environment designed to be adapted to the needs of local administrations of any size and also grow with them.

Another one of the functionalities offered by SmartBrain is an innovative analytical platform that predicts and helps to efficiently manage all kinds of events and situations in the urban setting. This solution is a ground-breaking project in Spain and which, with all the volume of information that can be generated by a city (sensors, complaints, comments on social networks, per capita income, birth rate, taxation, traffic, etc.), discovers and creates a new profile of the city and all the elements that make up this network (citizens, neighbourhoods, number of cars, etc.).

For example, this system may detect the number and socio-demographic profile of all the people that live in or move about in a specific street or area, or detect frauds in services and also predict certain events. For example, this information may help a store or a company to choose the best area to open a business depending on their product or service and the area’s needs.

SmartBrain is based on Sentilo, an OpenSource module designed to manage sensors in real time and which, through its community (www.sentilo.io), promoted by the IMI (Municipal Institute of Information Technologies of Barcelona), evolves constantly.

Sentilo as a Service is the basic proposal by Abertis Telecom and Accenture for Administrations or companies that wish to embark upon projects oriented towards sensorising certain services. Once the sensors have been installed and the information sent, the data can be accessed in a matter of minutes, as can the applications developed by the community or those offered by Abertis Telecom and Accenture as SaaS (Software as a Service).

Other smart city projects promoted by Abertis Telecom

In recent years, the company has developed several projects that foster and consolidate the smart city model. Of them, special mention must be made of the three LivingLabs promoted (Barcelona, Torrent and Tres Cantos), known as Smart Zones, which are technological solution testing-grounds for the new city model.