PARIS -- At a time when urban landscapes are rapidly changing, cities are confronting new challenges such as the optimization of power supplies and transport, improving the quality of life of their citizens and making themselves more attractive for businesses and tourists alike. Digital technology is one of the drivers supporting the transformation of cities.

Orange is supporting local authorities as they take on these challenges through its Smart Cities program, which supports the drivers of growth for the Group identified in the Conquests 2015 plan. “We believe that networks, the ability to exploit data and to propose dematerialized and mobile services are key to the transformation of cities. That is why we wish to place our expertise as an operator and integrator at the service of local authorities and all cities’ stakeholders. The smart city is a rich, but very fragmented ecosystem and that is why cities need to be able to rely on a single player capable of developing partnerships to provide them with a global solution. It is what we are mindful of with our Smart Cities program.” says Nathalie Leboucher, Head of Orange Smart Cities. In order to reach its goals, Orange is relying on both its close relationships with local authorities and its global presence.

A five-point development program to transform cities
Improving mobility within cities and making traffic more fluid with connected cars Orange is working alongside players in the automobile industry to develop on-board entertainment and security services (emergency calls) and to provide real-time information about traffic jams and carpooling services. Orange is also helping to make travel more efficient by providing drivers with interactive services designed to. reduce journey times and encourage car sharing in urban areas.

With this in mind, Orange has entered into a partnership with Streetline to deploy a new smart parking solution in France. The system informs car drivers in real time of the number of parking spaces available and guides them to an open space.

Furthermore, through the statistical – and anonymous – analysis of the data generated by activity in its mobile phone network, Orange is now able to provide cities and local authorities with a new source of information about road traffic. They are thus able to prepare accurate forecasts of traffic conditions and communicate them to road users.

Encouraging use of public transport. Making communication and information services available to travelers is a key driver for making public transport more user friendly. That is why Orange has chosen to develop services for travelers based on connectivity, e-ticketing and real-time information. For the first time in France, users of a new fleet of coaches, launched by the Departmental Council for Loire Atlantique and operated by Keolis, will benefit from a high-performance, on-board Wi-Fi service, part of the Orange 4G network, from Sept. 1 2013.

The Strasbourg Transport Company (CTS) has chosen to use Orange’s e-ticketing solution. Residents can now subscribe to the service and buy and validate tickets using their Near Field Communication (NFC) smartphone.

Smart Grids: helping distributors to manage energy more efficiently. Smart Grids help to optimize the distribution networks for energy supplies by using sensors on the network and smart meters for water, gas and electricity consumption or by identifying and resolving malfunctions remotely. In 2011, Orange teamed up with Véolia to create the “m2o city” joint venture, which currently operates close to 700,000 water meters in France.

Developing services to improve daily life for citizens and tourists. Including canteens, swimming pools, libraries, transport and also tourism, culture, sport, modern conurbations provide a broad range of urban services to their citizens that are managed by different IT systems. With ‘Ma ville dans ma poche’ (my city in my pocket), Orange offers a new generation of applications that help to combine all kinds of information about the city and supply it to residents. Bordeaux has chosen Orange to develop the future mobile application ‘Bordeaux in my pocket, which will be accessible using NFC mobile phones at the end of the first quarter 2014.

Bouches du Rhône Tourism has chosen Orange to help it manage its tourism strategy. Orange undertakes the anonymous statistical analysis of hundreds of thousands of pieces of data collected via its mobile phone network to produce high added value touristic indicators. These indicators enable Bouches du Rhône Tourism to analyse tourist fluxes, their evolution and visitor behaviour. Planning for and managing natural disasters is one of the major responsibilities of local authorities. To meet this need, Orange and Thales Alenia Space have developed a natural disaster risk management portal called CEMER. By matching the temporal and geographic factors underlying natural disasters, it is possible to improve the decisions made by Departmental Councils and the coordination of action plans by Prefectures. The Departmental Council of Alpes Maritimes has chosen to make the system operational as of this summer.

Smart Building: supporting the development of smart buildings at the service of the city of tomorrow. Encouraged by new cities, the traditional players in the field of technical building management are gradually migrating towards the computerisation of buildings for business use – the ‘smart building’. Orange offers services such as a personalised and simplified visitor reception, made possible by mobile phones, unique access control thanks to NFC, real time, multi-site management of energy consumption, dynamic displays of enriched communications for employees and geolocation for routing and flow management applications.

Orange supports real estate developers in their smart cities, district and building in the Gulf States and the Middle East. Orange