192 ITU‐T's Technical Reports And Specifications their services directly to the citizens. In most cases, these companies are the ones that provide the equipment and deploy the sensors. To help on the implementation of SSC, city service companies must learn to work with KPI based business models and work together with municipalities in this transition. As a result, these companies will have to increase the efficiency of their solutions, as their performance will be quantified and evaluated. This will increase competitiveness of the service companies. When creating their vertical solutions, city services companies should try to build these solutions in a way that they can adapt to standard transversal platforms, so that information from all the services can be accessed and disseminated. A difficulty that can be encountered in some cases, especially in companies that belong to the first group, is the lack of expertise or capacity to integrate ICTs on their processes since the \"know‐how\" of these companies is usually focused on the specific service they provide. At the same time, these companies are used to work independently in their vertical solution and the change to a more collaborative and interdependent model of service provision is not always easy. 4.4 Utility providers Utility providers offer services, such as electricity and gas, directly to the citizen. They usually integrate production, distribution and commercialization aspects, which provide them with expertise in all the different links of the value chain. They are responsible for the deployment of smart grids, smart metering systems and deployment of charging points for electrical vehicles, and therefore, their involvement in SSC initiatives is essential for their success. Utility providers cover extensive parts of the city’s territory. For this reason, the upgrade of their systems and the inclusion of ICT in their infrastructures implies a massive rollout and requires a considerable investment. One of the problems that they face nowadays is the morphology of the demand curve, which has peak and valley hours with very different consumption values. In the case of the electricity providers is complex to adapt to this curve, which is one of the issues that constraints the development and implementation of renewable energies. With the implementation of ICT based solutions, a smarter and sustainable network could flatten the demand curve and also increase the predictability of the demand. 4.5 ICT companies (e.g., telecom operators, start‐ups, software companies) The main role of ICT companies is to provide the ICT infrastructure and solutions that will support and integrate the services of SCC. It is important that these technological solutions are global and standard in nature, so that different vertical solutions can be easily integrated throughout the SSC. Due to the diversification they have experienced, Telecom operators, for example, can provide experience and expertise on the development of the platforms needed to integrate SSC services, as well as on the services themselves32. Because of their transversal nature, these platforms can encourage cooperation between services, and enable the creation of efficiencies. In order to drive the change towards SCC, ICT companies have to develop new financially sustainable business models that guarantee the implementation of smart solutions. ____________________ 32 Informe Anual Smart Cities. Telefonica.