聪明的城市需要5G吗？Three Cities Implementing 5G Today

The terms are often used interchangeably, but you can implement a smart city with or without 5G, and 5G doesn’t need to live in a smart city. But if you don’t want to be left in the digital dust, it seems clear that the trend is to not pursue one without keeping the other in mind.

Smart cities, in their various incarnations, are already beginning to happen. But existing 4G, 3G, and wireless networks can only do so much. The current limits on the number of connections these networks can support, as well as their data carrying capacity and their data speed. For the idea of the smart city to reach its true potential, the essential element is 5G.

智能城市的数据使用情况可能包括交通监控，公用事业管理，甚至是自动驾驶汽车的V2X（“所有设备”）连接。长期宣传的“自动驾驶汽车”几乎不能比玩具更重要，而没有智能网络将其与交通控制系统合并，并告诉它何时停下来无需进行人体干预。

5G's speed and low latency could ease some of the immense strain produced by the resulting data-hungry system. Marie Ma, Combra Telecom’s Senior Director of Technical Marketing Solutions and General Manager of Enterprise Business, described this concept in aninterview with Techwire Asiaas hyperconnectivity—the huge number of data points simultaneously passing huge data streams across the length and breadth of the covered area.

But you don’t have to wait for 5G and it’s OK to start small. You don’t even have to call it a smart city. Digital empires can be built piece by piece.

Here are three examples of 5G smart cities in the making right now.

全市数字化在澳大利亚

Taking advantage of earlier digital network infrastructure put in place to support the2018 Commonwealth Games, the city of Gold Coast, Australia is building an IoT network covering greater than 500 square miles, along with a supporting fiber-optic broadband system.

澳大利亚黄金海岸。图像用Sandid.

In August, Australian telecom company Telstraannounced that it "switched on" 5Gfor the Gold Coast area.As reported in ZDNet, early goals for the system include digital monitoring of water metering and waste management. The IoT system will not be limited to government use, but made available to all and to spur connectivity across the board.

As of March, Telstra had beensending 5G vehicles into the area: "We are also using mmWave spectrum and our 5G Gold Coast Innovation Centre to put a connected car on the road with the Intel 5G Automotive Trial Platform, one of the most advanced 5G prototype devices available in the world today."

A Telstra 5G vehicle. Image used courtesy ofTelstra

The cars are equipped with Intel's5G移动试用平台，旨在将Intel处理器，天线和RF组件以及几个FPGA结合起来，以开发移动，可扩展和系统级别的5G技术。

5G Service for Africa

Vodacom is applying an interesting twist in the tiny nation of Lesotho in Africa.5G here will be implementedat a frequency band centering on 3.5GHz as opposed to frequencies about ten times as great that power conventional 5G. Bandwidth will be lower, but the longer wavelengths will do a better job of penetrating into buildings.

This is central to the plan here, which is to replace outdated broadband modem services with a “fixed 5G” service for two large customers. Supporting rapid-fire mobile communications and wide area IoT is not yet in the offing here.

重要的一点是，虽然该服务仅有望提供700 Mbps的下载速度具有10毫秒延迟，但Vodacom坚持使用“基于标准的5G”。这很重要，因为它可以确保该系统不会随着时间的流逝而陷入非标准的，过时的白大象，但它宁愿随着不断发展的5G技术而增长。

就在今天，沃达科姆（Vodacom）宣布正式发布其莱索托（Lesotho）5G商业服务，并提供了5G驱动的无人机示范：

Earlier today at the Vodacom Dome, we celebrated Africa's FIRST commercial 5G service in Lesotho. We displayed some of the possibilities that 5G connectivity will offer in future and we can only agree that #TheFutureIsExciting! pic.twitter.com/wzb9geoCVs
— Vodacom (@Vodacom) September 6, 2018
 

Moscow's Ambitious Plans for 5G

In May,Moscow officials signed documentationstating their intention to develop telecommunications infrastructure through projects such asAR/VRand further development of the IoT. Among their priorities were both "smart city technology" and 5G.

According to the official website of Moscow's mayor, "The document was signed in accord with the provisions of the Russian Federation’s Digital Economy State Programme, which provides for creating pilot 5G networks before the third quarter of 2019 and the commercial launch of these networks before 2022."

莫斯科的努力将以医疗保健，运输，建筑和住房公用事业为中心。由于为最近的数字基础设施建造的大量数字基础设施，这座城市的开端Moscow World Cup.

The city plans to begin testing specific 5G elements in 2019. A first 5G effort for the evolving system will be to enable the quick transfer of gigantic ultrasound diagnostic files between different points of the medical establishments.

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These examples illustrate that smart cities can be built from the ground up. Or, a smart city can come up from a very humble just-barely-5G beginning. It can even evolve out of an older gigantic system originally built to host a sporting event as it has in Moscow.

The future of smart cities may look different in five to 10 years. As each of these example areas grow and change, the challenges of hyperconnectivity may require more than even 5G can offer.