Smart Cities: The Opportunity for Wireline Network Operators delves into what a smart city really is, identifies exemplar developments, proposes a simple model of a smart city and its components and shows how islands of smart technology and processes can be joined together. It summarizes the relevant smart city products, services and solutions of several leading technology providers, indicating which of them are sold direct to city authorities and which can be used by wireline operators to help build a compelling smart city solution of their own. Finally, it profiles eight technology vendors and describes the activities of three network operators taking different approaches to capturing the opportunities presented by smart cities.

"The term 'smart city' defies simple definition, but it is generally used to describe a city with dense ICT infrastructure and applications using this infrastructure to make the city function as efficiently and effectively as possible," says Danny Dicks, research analyst with Heavy Reading Insider and author of the report. "The 'smart city' is a useful shorthand term for myriad complex, sometimes interlinked, ICT solutions to problems of living and working in cities in the future."

The good news for wireline network operators is that significant additional revenue is there to be competed for, but this is tempered with the fact that each smart city opportunity is likely to be different, and there is no "one size fits all" solution, Dicks says. "Smart city projects and programs have several different drivers, sources of funding and outcomes. To build a smart city requires investment in ICT at multiple levels," he continues. "Estimates of the scale of the ICT investment range very widely, but are generally in the order of billions of dollars per year, and rising sharply."

Key findings of Smart Cities: The Opportunity for Wireline Network Operators include the following: