US Ignite's Mari Silbey provides commentary on a few topics related to smart cities, including how research universities are helping cities slice up IoT and sensor data into bite-sized morsels.

Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief

July 9, 2019

2 Min Read
Podcast: Parsing Data & Sharing Poles in Smart Cities

Cities are huge consumers of telecom connectivity and services but the path to becoming "smart" cities looks a lot different now than it did even a year ago.

US Ignite's Mari Silbey joins the podcast to help dig into two areas -- data analytics and infrastructure sharing -- that are central to the cities of the future becoming more connected and being better places to live, work and play.

Silbey starts out with some positive examples of cities using data to fix things and keep citizens safer -- from predicting health code violations in Chicago to stemming the tide of blight in Baton Rouge. As the discussion goes on, Silbey said there are still a lot of challenges around helping cities normalize and analyze data so they can do something with it. Universities are helping, in some cases, to supply the manpower and resources, as part of some creative new partnerships.

As we discuss telcos sharing infrastructure, we briefly touch on the buildouts for 5G that haven't really addressed the connectivity problem in small cities and rural communities. "In theory, one of the things 5G is good for is being able to connect lots and lots of different devices. But I'm not sure we've maxed out what 4G can do on that front, in terms of Iot use cases in rural areas," Silbey said. "And if there's not a business case, it's hard to imagine that telcos are going to want to invest just to increase capacity when there may not be an immediate return on investment."

The Light Reading podcast is available on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud.

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Phil Harvey, US Bureau Chief, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Phil Harvey

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Phil Harvey has been a Light Reading writer and editor for more than 18 years combined. He began his second tour as the site's chief editor in April 2020.

His interest in speed and scale means he often covers optical networking and the foundational technologies powering the modern Internet.

Harvey covered networking, Internet infrastructure and dot-com mania in the late 90s for Silicon Valley magazines like UPSIDE and Red Herring before joining Light Reading (for the first time) in late 2000.

After moving to the Republic of Texas, Harvey spent eight years as a contributing tech writer for D CEO magazine, producing columns about tech advances in everything from supercomputing to cellphone recycling.

Harvey is an avid photographer and camera collector – if you accept that compulsive shopping and "collecting" are the same.

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