special report getting smart with smart cities€¦ · hat smart cities are moving beyond a...

An ITP Media Group Publication www.commsmea.comCritical analysis for telecommunications executives

DECEMBER 2018

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SPECIAL REPORT

GETTINGSMART WITH

SMART CITIES

IN PARTNERSHIP

WITHWITWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW HHHHHHHHHHHHH

SAVE THE DATEWEDNESDAY 13TH MARCH 2019

DUBAI, UAE

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only makes sense we try and under-stand what it is we’re talking about – or at least understand what others are talking about with increasingly frequency as days go by.

Hence: our very first CommsMEA Special Report.

Here’s how it works: each month, we’ll be covering a big, hairy, heady, and downright wicked topic that’s generating buzz (and/or causing a few headaches) in tech and telecoms circles. To do that, we’ll be asking clever people in our community – and some from outside the com-munity in order to bring in a fresh perspective – to weigh in, offering up expert insights, analysis, and making some bold predictions for the future. Think of it like this: if the Special Report is a debate society meeting at a local coffee shop, then you, the reader, are invited to pull up a chair and listen in – and even weigh in yourself (we do have social media channels and email addresses we can be reached at, after all).

To help steer the conversation of the Special Report, we also have what’s known as our Knowledge Partner. In short, these are folks who really know what they’re talking about around a particular subject – and want to share their expertise with others. For this first Special Report on smart cities, we have NXN. Suffice it to say, they know what they’re talking about, and have some pretty persuasive arguments to make and valuable advice to disperse – and have been doing it for quite a while. After all, they’re one of the Middle East’s preeminent leaders in just this area.

Oh, and like any debate society, if you have something to say and want to get involved, then by all means get in touch with us, and we’ll get you on the agenda for the next meeting.

But on to the business at hand. Welcome. Come on in, go over to the counter and order a coffee (or tea, if that’s what tickles your fancy, though coming from New Zealand I personally am a bit impartial to a choice flat white), pull up a chair, and sit down. Let the conversation about smart cities begin…

We need to talk about smart cities.Actually, we need to talk about a lot of things. But smart cities? Yes, we

do – in fact, we needed to a while ago.Here’s why: what, exactly, makes a city “smart?” What is a “smart city?”

What technologies enable them, and what might they look like in the future? And, of course, where do telcos come in?

As smart cities become an increasingly prevalent part of our lexicon, it

Welcome to the debut of a new section in CommsMEA: the Special Report. Without further ado, let’s talk about smart cities.

A smart helloBy: Ben Mack

As smart cities become an increasingly prevalent part of our lexicon, it only makes sense we try and understand what it is we’re talking about – or at least understand what others are talking about with increasingly frequency as days go by.”

About the author

Ben Mackis editor of CommsMEA.

Got a comment?

E-mail at:[email protected]

Could Dubai be considered an example of a smart city?

43CommsMEA December 2018www.commsmea.com

SPECIAL REPORT SMART CITIES

More than 31 billion Internet of Things devices are expected to be online by 2020, with a market value of about US $8.9 trillion – almost incomprehensibly large numbers. But 2020 is also barely a year away. So how can telcos leverage the opportunities now? And how can they overcome the serious challenges to

things such as network capacity and security?

by Ben Mack

GETTING SMART WITH SMART

CITIES STRATEGIES

44 CommsMEA December 2018 www.commsmea.com


That smart cities are moving beyond a buzzword and into a tangible real-ity around the world isn’t news to anyone. It’s a business opportunity, with the number of Internet of Things

devices is expected to grow to about 31 billion devices worldwide by 2020 – and the global mar-ket is projected to increase to US$8.9 trillion by 2020, according to Statista.

According to Marwan Bin Dalmook, senior vice president for ICT solutions and smart city opera-tions at du, that’s simply too much money, and too many connected devices, for any technology company to ignore – not just telcos.

“It is expected that in a smart city environ-ment, more and more devices will be connected, turning data collected throughout the city into nuggets of important information – which will, in turn, provide residents with insights,” he says.

An example of an IoT-related project for smart cities is smart metering. In its most common form, smart metering refers to water meters that can be monitored remotely for things such as water use, leakages, and more – which, of course, is of particular importance in parts of the Middle East and Africa where water is scarce, but popu-lations and water use are nonetheless rising.

Telcos are also getting involved with smart me-tering. Zain has conducted trials in the past few months on smart metering trials in Kuwait. In Saudi Arabia, National Water Company (NWC) and Saudi telecom Company (STC) signed a memorandum of understanding in October to roll out smart meters throughout the kingdom. STC will provide network and ICT services for the project, which will be trialled before an even-tual nationwide rollout.

US-based Sensus has also recently inked a deal with STC for smart metering for utilities and other services in Saudi Arabia. The first tests will be conducted in the capital of Riyadh. Eventu-ally, the hope is to roll it out across the entire kingdom, says Sensus GCC strategic sales lead Ian Sykes.

But he says the project is not without its chal-lenges. “You need [the network] to be robust and reliable to realise the potential.”

The smart metering project is just one of sev-eral smart cities projects STC is working on. Ac-cording to senior accounts vice president Riyadh Muawad, the company is repositioning itself as an ICT company rather than just a telecom-munications company to take advantage of the



changes – something he says other telcos should follow suit in.

Data demands and smart cities net-work challengesBut as exciting as smart cities projects such as Dubai’s RTA’s new US$160 million plan for smart traffic management (with the initial stage of the project, announced in November, to focus on data capturing systems such as cameras, vehicle detection devices as well as Bluetooth devices and weather sensors) or “smart pavement” (which UK firm Pavegen has developed, where every step a person takes on it generates a small amount of electricity) may sound, they also pre-sent some serious challenges to telcos.

With so many connected devices and services, an enormous amount of data is being gener-ated – and consequently, there needs to be the bandwidth to handle all the data, and future data demands. Or so says Azz-Eddine Mansouri, sen-ior sales director at Ciena Middle East.

He says: “Such seamless connectivity is not possible without an uninterrupted flow of information and coordination among countless devices. For smart cities to become a reality, there needs to be increased network bandwidth, with security and reliability that will enable the distribution, collection and analysis of data to and from millions to billions of devices and homes, while flagging problems, and taking ac-tion in near real time.”

Then there are the security challenges, par-ticularly when it comes to people’s data. Jihad Tayara, vice president of business development and partnerships – new business and innovation at du, highlights a new partnership with French healthcare company Olea Medical to improve healthcare to people in remote areas. The two companies created a service called the Consult Station, a medical connected booth that allows a patient to consult a physician remotely under the same conditions as a traditional face-to-face consultation. Tayara says it will be rolled out in remote areas of the United Arab Emirates, sav-ing patients lengthy and expensive journeys for medical treatment. While the whole idea is to im-prove people’s well-being, Tayara cites the need to keep private medical data safe a key challenge.

Collaboration and 5GTo overcome the security challenges, Red Hat’s Lee Miles says it’s important for telcos to know

SMART WATERKuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water announced this past September a new smart meter pro-ject which will connect hundreds of thousands of buildings across the country.

The project is a partnership with telco Zain and business consultants Oliver Wyman, with Ericsson acting as systems integrator.

The project will install a total of 800,000 electrical meters and 300,000 water meters to homes and office across the country, helping to meet the New Kuwait Vision 2035 goals of effective govern-ance.

Smart meter sensors will transmit water and electricity data on Zain’s networks to the ministry’s digital core. Ericsson will provide SAP’s HANA in-memory platform to process the data, which will be used for real time data on utilities usage and billing.

By running on a digital core, the ministry can enable customers to pay bills online and via mobile apps, alert customers if their utilities usage spikes, and “gamify” the experience to encourage more sustainable utilities usage. The ministry can also contact customers in case of utilities emergencies.

“Kuwait’s residents expect to interact with their utilities providers as quickly and easily as any private sector company,” says Dr Meshan Alotaibi, assistant undersecretary of consumer affairs at the Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait.

“By partnering with global technology companies, real-time utilities usage and billing will help our customers to save time and enhance our utilities maintenance and sustainability, all in line with Kuwait National Development Plan’s smart government goals.”

Ahmed Al-Faifi, senior vice president and managing director at SAP Middle East North, says: “Digi-tal energy networks and smart meters are transforming utilities providers around the world, with the Kuwait Ministry of Electricity and Water demonstrating leadership in developing next-generation en-ergy infrastructure. We’re exchanging global best practices in smart utilities for the Ministry to have a 360-degree customer view, for more efficient utilities maintenance, transmission, and distribution.”

Marwan Bin Dalmook, senior vice president for ICT solutions and smart city operations at du.



a more seamless experience.Another solution for managing network

capacity is 5G, according to Huawei deputy and rotating chairperson Ken Hu. Much of his speech at Huawei’s Global MBB Forum, held in London in November, focused on how 5G could help with data demands in smart cities, especially in that upgrading networks for 5G services provides a good opportunity to use the latest technology to increase network capacity simultaneously.

At the same event, GSMA director-general Mats Granyrd stressed the importance of what he called “intelligent management.” He said managing network demand, especially coming from the explosion in IoT devices, will be key to “the development of a rich and vibrant digital economy.”

Smarter servicesYet a smart city is more than new technologies and investing in new infrastructure and manag-ing the data demands – at least according to Mary Ames, director of strategy at Xische & Co. She argues a smart city is really about services – something telcos should keep in mind when iron-ing out strategies for smart city development.

“Telcos already own and operate world class

what the challenges are – and not overcomplicate things. “We just want to see one interface, see one surface in an app. For the companies to be able to achieve that, it’s important the infrastructure, the network is virtualised, it runs on software-defined storage, is taking advantage of the cloud – it’s important that all of that works in a seamless infrastructure.”

He also advocates collaboration as a way for dealing with the network and security challenges of smart cities. “If you think about it from a tech-nology perspective, I would say 80 to 90% of what every company does is the same,” says Miles.

Abdul Wahid Mattoo, security incident re-sponse manager at du, says with each IoT device having an IP address in a smart city, it can be hacked – and the exponential increase of IoT devices means that many more things that can be attacked. Plus, there’s another issue. “The bad guys also communicate with each other,” he says.

“We need to unite. When we don’t collaborate, who takes advantage? Hackers do.”

In a smart city, he says an example could be a shared firewall everyone contributes to, or government regulations requiring sharing of in-formation and collaboration. Not only would this provide security benefits, he says, but also create

infrastructure to meet the connectivity require-ments of their customers, and have the in-house expertise required to not only manage these networks, but also to create value from the data generated by this network,” she explains.

“Telcos can provide similar services for each layer of the smart city project: from installing, managing and securing IoT connected sensors, to data orchestration, management and storage; to supporting enabling services such as data intel-ligence or APIs, to delivering customer-centric applications for businesses and individuals.”

We need to unite. When we don’t collaborate, who takes advantage? Hackers do.”Abdul Wahid Mattoo

Red Hat's Lee Miles.

WHAT IS A SMART CITY?The term gets thrown around a lot, but what exactly is a smart city?

In 2013, H. H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announced a project to transform Dubai into a smart city. The purpose of the project was primarily to provide seamless services to the public, and built on six pillars of a smart city. These pillars are:• Transport• Communications• Infrastructure• Electricity• Economic services• Urban planning

And the pillars are leading to impressive results: in early 2018, Mateja Kovacic, visiting research fellow from the University of Sheffield, said Dubai was an emerging prototype of a smart city. Local media reported she also believed Dubai was among the three smartest cities in the world, along with Tokyo and Singapore.



NXN AND THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE AND INNOVATION IN SMART CITIES

Smart cities may be all the rage these days. But few organisations have been involved in smart cities projects as long as NXN – and even fewer are continuing to innovate quite like they are. Hence why they’re our Knowledge Partner for this special report on smart cities.

The view from NXN CEO Ghazi Atallah’s window at his company’s Dubai office is impressive, with a sweeping vista of the city below and clear, blue water

that looks more like something one would see on a postcard. Such a view also gives Atallah the perfect vantage point from which to view the development of Dubai itself – particularly how it develops as a smart city, something which NXN coincidentally has been heavily involved in.

The world’s leading vendors – the likes of SAP, Huawei and many, many more – are now adopting and pushing the concept of digital and smart city platforms. But that’s something NXN, formerly known as neXgen, has already been do-ing for years.

“We’ve certainly been at the forefront,” he says.One thing that’s helped NXN be at the fore-

front is DNX, its smart cities platform. Three-and-a-half years in the making, the platform can help cities digitally transform more quickly (in other words, move from inefficient paper systems to digital ones), integrate systems, and reduce silos. Translation: the platform can help increase the efficiency of a city and reduce headaches – potentially making people happier.

Atallah says the DNX uses cloud technology to make it scalable, which can also help handle the network capacity and data demands that come from the explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and more connected services.

And it’s something that works well, too, with use cases including energy management in a large real estate project (things such as smart lighting and smart air conditioning), connecting

believes the future of smart cities is a bright one – and a future telcos can play an important role in shaping.

“In the future, we’ll be thinking more about how cities develop services,” he says.

He adds citizens, residents, businesspeople, and others in smart cities in the future will likely be interacting with cities in ways they choose, not the other way around. That, he says, represents a fundamental shift from the cities of today. “Cities need to get ready. It’s really a paradox.”

But perhaps less of a paradox with NXN – which just so happened to win the Smart City and Network Initiative of the Year award at this year’s CommsMEA Awards.

As he says: “The market is moving. The tech-nology is moving. The services are moving.”

The market is moving. The technology is moving. The services are moving.”- Ghazi Atallah

NXN CEO Ghazi Atallah.

security devices such as cameras, and serving as a “brain” for smart government services and inte-grating services.

But it’s also much more than that. Able to evolve and integrate new technologies like artifi-cial intelligence (AI), Atallah is quick to point out that DNX – and really NXN as a whole – is about far more than simply selling something a cus-tomer, and then that’s that. According to Atallah, it’s about an ongoing relationship, a multi-year partnership that involves support, implementa-tion, and a continued discussion on increasing efficiency and managing network challenges.

NXN is also involved in smart cities projects in some of the “smartest” cities in the region: Dubai, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait City in Ku-wait. But those are just a few reasons why Atallah



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