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Table 3.2: Overview of challenges and opportunities (end)

What? Why? What is done today/best Possible way forward Chapter 3
practice
Standards (from • Technical standards have • ITU has a Global • Further cooperation
the ITU and other evolved for different appli- Standards Initiative is needed between
organisations)
cations and stakeholders, to develop IoT stan- key standards bodies
making them less coherent. dards and provide an such as ITU, IEEE, IETF,
• Smaller national markets may “umbrella” for other IoT-specific standards
lack scale to support devel- standards organizations. organizations, and
opment of local IoT solutions, • Wider-focus IoT and industry groups such as
unless they are built on inter- application-specific GSMA.
national standards. standards groups and • Governments can
• Specific software often is frameworks. encourage further
needed for each system, standardization through
increasing user load. participation in stan-
dards bodies (already
• Premature standardization prioritized in China,
can constrain innovation, Korea and India), as
but partial or late standard- well as through R&D
ization can create industry funding and procure-
coordination problems and ment policies.
fragmented technology
options. • Development of
common user interface
mechanisms, especially
via web browsers.

create the city-wide infrastructure needed for 3.4.2 Connectivity
smart cities takes a strong commitment from local
governments and other authorities, as well as large For IoT system designers, there is a choice
investments and strong partnerships between between centralized, cloud-based functionality
municipalities, businesses and contractors. and more distributed applications, where some
Laying new fibre-optic cables to increase the data is stored and processed on or near the
communication bandwidth available for smart sensors. Centralized systems allow a small number
city applications, for example, can be done more of powerful computers to manage large numbers
cheaply if contractors take advantage of shared of cheap devices – although those devices must
infrastructure (such as road trenches and utility have a network interface that can connect to
tunnels) coordinated by a local authority. the Internet or to mobile phone networks. This
centralized configuration has advantages when
This can be particularly effective when a smart large amounts of sensor data must be processed.
city is built on a green-field site. The ITU-T focus
group on smart, sustainable cities has developed In a more distributed system, devices can send
specifications for multi-service infrastructure in data to smart phones or other, nearby computing
such new-development areas. One example it devices over a local radio protocol such as
provides is the new Indian city Lavasa, where a Bluetooth. These local devices can process data
single company has been appointed to establish, before sharing it further across a global network.
maintain, and grant rights to assets such as dark This increases system responsiveness to a local
fibre, rights-of-way, duct space, and towers on a user, and it can provide more data privacy
lease/rent/sale basis . In existing cities, system protection – which is especially valuable for
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deployment is likely to be on an incremental basis. sensitive information such as health data .
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Some radio protocols (such as Ultra-Narrow
Band) can provide longer-range coverage, which
can be useful for smart city applications such as

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