US telco conglomerate AT&T has signed a deal with inward investment promotion agency IDA Ireland and Dublin City Council to collaborate on smart city development.
As part of the deal, AT&T will provide information and guidance on how IoT technologies can be used in developing Ireland’s smart city capabilities.
However, the telco has also said it is open to working with ‘other organizations’ on IoT projects across the country, including Dublin’s Docklands IoT project.
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An IoT hub
Ireland is fast becoming an IoT hub. As part of the country’s Pervasive Nation project, a long-range, low power wide-area network (LoRaWAN) has been set up by Semtech Corporation to support IoT applications.
And the country is already benefiting from the network. The Port of Cork, for example, the second busiest port in Ireland, is tracking shipping containers through LoRa-equipped sensors.
AT&T is tasked with developing these capabilities even further, into areas like transportation, public services and infrastructure, particularly within the capital city of Dublin.
Dublin City Council’s CEO Owen Keegan recognizes that IoT and other technologies that make-up a smart city will eventually come to define future cities.
“Dublin has the key ingredients and is exploiting them to be at the forefront of smart city developments leveraging our unique cluster of global technology companies, thriving start-ups and research centres,” Keegan said.
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Global smart city developments
Alongside its work in Ireland, AT&T is already helping cities like Atlanta, Chicago and Miami-Dade County on similar projects ranging from water conservation to intelligent lighting to citizen engagement.
And today it has signed an agreement with GE’s energy-focused IoT arm, Current, to connect cities across the United States and Mexico to IoT.
The deal will see AT&T use outdoor LED lighting in these cities to create a digital infrastructure that helps address issues like traffic flow and parking optimization, gunshot detection on city streets, air quality monitoring and weather emergency alerts.
Update: this article was corrected to reflect the role of the IDA as an inward investment promotion agency, not a management consultancy as previously stated.