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It is projected that by 2050, 60 per cent of the world’s population will have migrated and
will live in urban areas.
Every day more than 180 thousand people move to a city to live in the world.
The five smartest and most efficient cities on the planet are: Singapore, London, New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
In the current world in which we live, technology is a vital tool to develop ourselves in many areas of life. That is why the definition and use of smart cities that have been developed thanks to the connectivity of technology have become increasingly normal.
“Smart city” is understood as a city that, through the use of technology, provides traditional services and solves urban situations.
Likewise, specialists on the subject detail that a smart city is one that, among other things, facilitates mobility, improves social services, is sustainable and gives citizens a voice.
Given this definition, it is reported that every day more than 180 thousand people move to a city to live, where data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts that in 2050 the world population will amount to nine billion inhabitants, of which 70 percent will live in urban centers.
In the year 2020, each person managed to have up to ten devices connected to the Internet, which is why cities, for their part, would have more than 50 billion sensors that will provide 1,800 Zettabytes of data. These data would consist of information on traffic conditions, CO2 levels in the air, incidents, weather information, temperature, among others. It is expected that by 2030, the amount of data that will circulate in the Smart Cities between sensors and our mobiles will already be several tens of thousands of Zettabytes.
According to him Smart City Index, conducted by the consulting firm Juniper Research and the technology giant Intel, the five most intelligent and efficient cities on the planet in terms of mobility, health, safety and productivity, are: Singapore, London, New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
The connective a key to smart cities
As a future of which many cities like this are already registered, the forecasts for smart cities will continue to grow. In this sense, connectivity is one of the key tools to carry out the development of these cities.
Carlos Perea, Vice President for Latin America at Cradlepoint, a leading company in the development and implementation of wireless networks, said that “New advances in wireless technology, such as 5G, Wi-Fi6, LoRaWAN and, more recently, private cellular networks, are helping to consolidate the development of smart cities. The massification of mobile devices and the development of numerous and innovative applications have also contributed to this consolidation, so today it is possible to observe more and more administrations and city governments that take advantage of these technologies around the world”.
In that sense, experts add that enthusiastic governments that want to take the step to turn their city into a smart city must ensure that they partner with their inhabitants, and with other developers at each stage of the way to guarantee that they obtain the necessary support, same that will serve them in budgetary and implementation issues.
This will bring a lot of help through new technologies, improve problems such as telecommunications services, promote telemedicine, have connected emergency fleets, or improve tele-education, even take care of the environment. with buildings that consume less energy, and even boost trade and tourism by collecting data to improve the experience of customers and users.
Since having the best connection possibilities is one of the fundamental components of smart cities, city administrations must have experts in wireless communications, as well as in data analysis and storage, cloud management and edge computing knowledge. . Wireless technology can be applied in various ways to meet the needs of large cities, however, it is a priority to have expert advice in this regard, with the aim of choosing the best solutions to optimize resources and streamline processes.
“The higher performance offered by the 5G network, the fifth generation technological standard for cellular networks, has generated great expectations, and it will surely be useful for cities that work with autonomous vehicles, robotics or large video files; this type of use would likely need all the capacity and lower latency that 5G technology offers. However, other uses, such as air pollution measurement or rainfall measurement, can work with 4G or LTE networks, or with a reduced capacity of 5G networks. Choosing the best wireless alternatives for the different use cases saves resources and achieves better results”, assured Carlos Perea.
In Mexico, the penetration of internet service in cities is good and According to figures from the National Survey of Availability and Use of Information Technologies in Households, published by the National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI), in urban areas eight out of 10 Mexicans are online.
That is why in the latest edition of the index “Cities in Motion”, published in 2020, Mexico City reached 130th place out of 174 in said index, behind other Latin American capitals such as Santiago, Chile, with 68; Buenos Aires, Argentina, with 90; and Montevideo, Uruguay with 110.
But also, recently, 5G technology began to be deployed in 18 cities in the country, while most of the large cities in the national territory have had 4G technology for some years. This situation has allowed various institutions and experts in urban infrastructure to recognize five Mexican cities as smart cities, such as Mexico City, Ciudad Maderas, in Querétaro, Ciudad Creativa Digital, in Jalisco, Tequila, in Jalisco, Smart Puebla, in Puebla.
In this sense, currently every city can become a smart city, since currently available wireless technologies allow the development of cities that make better use of their resources, treat their waste better, and provide quality of life for their inhabitants. , and in addition, they simplify and make both government and industrial processes more efficient.
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