Telekom Romania, a strong supporter of Smart City development in Romania

Just like many other countries in the world Romania is now facing an unprecedented growth of the urban population, which can be both beneficial and detrimental for the society and for the administrations’s budgets, if not managed properly.

The Smart City concept comes as a solution to this challenge, by optimizing public services, such as traffic planning, improving the urban safety and air quality or smart lighting. Many countries have recognized the potential value of the Smart City concept and have taken steps forward to accelerate the development of such cities.

At Telekom Romania we have a high level of expertise in choosing and integrating Smart City technologies, based on both the experience and practice at Deutsche Telekom group level and the projects that we have developed locally. It is a concept in which we believe, due to the significant benefits that interconnectivity brings to the citizens and the future will certainly be based on interconnectivity.

Telekom Romania’s Smart City solutions

Supporting the need to increase mobility efficiency in crowded urban areas and the need to reduce the impact of transport on the environment, by using a means of transport that does not generate pollution, such as the bicycle, Telekom has built a smart bike sharing solution. Created with the purpose to support the owners of bikes for rent, the solution implemented in bike sharing stations, includes an intelligent renting terminal where the cost of the ride can be paid, a station with electromagnetic blocking system and an energy charging system. Telekom’s public transport management solution contributes to the optimization of public transport quality and to the improvement of the travelers’ experience. Through this solution, the municipalities can plan the activity of all the vehicles in the network easier and have real time access to information about the itinerary and the state of the vehicles. This information helps them improve the maintenance car park programme, optimize the ticket sales, manage the unexpected situations that occur on the vehicles’ routes easier, improve the traffic hours based on the number of passengers and manage the traffic lights more efficiently. The smart parking solution helps drivers gain time in traffic, ensures a more fluid traffic, lower CO2 emissions and reduces the risk of fines for illegal parking.

Telekom Romania and its partner Smart Sun Solutions have created the digital tree, a solar charger for mobile devices with Wi-Fi internet connection.

Managed WI-FI is a Wi-Fi internet solution for companies with data analytics component. The final users have internet access and the companies can extract relevant data, such as, data about the areas with the highest traffic in a store.
Telekom’s smart public lighting solution ensures light intensity setting depending on the needs, reducing thus energy consumption.

One of the solutions that help increase citizens’ security through the monitoring of public spaces, such as streets, parks and buildings is Telekom’s smart video surveillance system that includes video cameras and uses advanced video image analysis applications for the instant detection of incidents and authorities’ alert.

The smart pillar component includes electric vehicle charging station, Wi-Fi area, environment monitoring indicators and advertising messages display.

Telekom at the forefront of Smart City development in Romania

In 2016 Telekom Romania launched the first pilot project in Tineretului Park in Bucharest. The project was a first in Romania, combining 4 of the latest technologies for intelligent parking, free Wi-Fi connectivity, city safety and intelligent lighting, integrated on a dedicated IoT platform and was, at the same time, one of the first Smart City projects launched by Deutsche Telekom group.
The next Smart City project was in Constanţa, in June 2017 and in December 2017 Telekom implemented the third project in Piatra Neamt.

When launching the pilot projects Telekom Romania focused on several objectives: testing citizens’ level of openness to innovative solutions, working with local authorities and testing several technologies. The implementation of these projects has taught us that selecting the best technology solution providers is important, but the ability to put these technologies together, in a cost effective, highly performing technical solution is even more important.

Each city has different goals and needs, different issues that smart solutions can address and the technology should also vary based on the region and needs. For instance, while improving public transportation might be essential in one city, air quality improvement might be the key need in another city. Smart for a city like Bucharest will be very different than a city like Piatra Neamt, for instance. It is also essential to build partnerships between the public and private sector to find the best technological and financial resources for the development of smart cities.

When developing a new Smart City project, Telekom Romania is taking all the necessary aspects into account and is constantly looking at new more efficient ways of interconnecting Smart technologies in order to create solutions that significantly improve citizens’ lives.

(P)