Zayo has been selected by a major global technology company to deploy metro dark fiber in Chicago. The solution leverages Zayo’s dense Chicago fiber network that spans more than 1,600 route miles and connects more than 35 data centers. As noted by Zayo, dark fiber offers substantial levels of bandwidth, a higher level of control and long-term lease terms.
The building of the future is interconnected, communicates with the people inside of it and creates positive emotions. It’s safe and efficient and makes a contribution to environmental protection, for example by improving air quality. This environmental aspect harbors tremendous potential, especially in megacities. The building of the future is smart and capable of communicating with outside systems, including the power grid. And it accommodates the needs of its users. This happens automatically, to a certain extent, but users also have the option to adjust the settings to suit their own preferences.
Is 5G a requirement for a smart city? No. But will 5G serve as a major enabler for smart cities? Yes, particularly in terms of supporting up to a million connected devices per square kilometer, a major enhancement as compared to LTE. But this is somewhat paradoxical given the realities of what we’re seeing on the ground in terms of smart city investments. Limited pilot projects have proven very difficult to scale. So if there were hundreds of thousands of sensors blanketing an urban core in service of a smart city project, 5G would be the way to go, but, for the most part, that’s not the case anywhere.
A smart lamp post is slowly being introduced to our cities to be used for communication purposes. In the not-to-distant future, 90% of the equipment loaded on or in these smart poles will be communication related. The remaining 10% might be used by the lighting. The communication requirements for a smart pole might include technology for security, networking, power and communication.
Edge computing’s goal is to process data and services as close to the end user as possible. It’s an architecture that allows the compute and content delivery process to happen within 10 milliseconds or less of the user. According to a recent AFCOM State of the Data Center Industry study, edge solutions are one of the top areas of focus for data center end users. Forty four percent have already deployed some form of edge computing capacity or say they will be doing so over the next 12 months, according to the study. Look out over the course of the next three years, and another 17 percent of respondents have edge computing on their business plans.
ComNet has introduced a new 12-port Gigabit managed Layer 2 switch that includes two 10GigE uplink ports designed for high-bandwidth usage requirements, such as smart cities and connected vehicle applications.
Each day that is not spent converting to smart buildings is a day in which valuable financial and environmental resources have been, in effect, wasted. A global qualitative study by Siemens estimates the potential for “self-financing” smart building conversion across 13 countries in commercial buildings, government buildings and hospitals. Using private sector finance solutions known as “Smart Buildings as a Service”, buildings owners can harness savings gained from smart upgrades and then deploy those savings to facilitate self-financing style investment.
The emergence of Smart Buildings have raised a number of cyber challenges, Recent ransomware cyber attacks on Buildings highlights the need for mature and deployment based Frameworks to protect user, services and infrastructure
Smart cities bring together infrastructure and technology to improve the quality of life of citizens and enhance their interactions with the urban environment. But how can data from areas such as public transport, air quality meters and energy production be integrated and effectively used? By rendering more technology capable of communicating across platforms, IoT generates more data that can help improve various aspects of daily life. Cities can identify both opportunities and challenges in real-time, reducing costs by pinpointing issues prior to their emergence and allocating resources more accurately to maximize impact.
Today’s commercial buildings waste up to 30% of energy, but solutions that use the Internet of Things could help change that.
