Smart Cities & The Importance of the Fiber Network

Introduction

Within the city construct there are a lot of considerations to delivering "Smart Solutions and Services". In this white paper we will explore the opportunities and benefits from a foundational perspective of connectivity strategies that leverage Fiber as the backbone for “Smart” service delivery.

Executive Summary

Since the initial use of Fiber Optic Cable in the mid 70’s to connect US Government computers, we have seen an increase over the years in the use of fiber networking. However, it has not been as broadly recognized until recently just how integral the fiber backbone is to reliable, resilient broadband communications infrastructure is for the future of cities and municipalities alike.

While fiber networks are not new, the technology has continued to advance, and they are indeed the catalyst to just about every use case where “Smart” is included, supporting critical infrastructure and beyond. Fiber networks are not just for the purpose of faster internet, but think about latency sensitive solutions such as traffic monitoring and general multi-modal transportation, first responder services in the city and likewise utility distribution services to improve utility reliability and outage management.

Pre-pandemic, cities across North America were deploying Municipal Wi-Fi as a means of improving connectivity and access for citizens. These municipal networks often times leverage city deployed fiber but were typically only in the metropolitan downtown areas. This was shown to be an oversight, as with a bit more consideration, additional investment and partnership, the thousands of underserved citizens could have benefited from connectivity where there was none. Distance learning and the huge uptick in bandwidth utilization due to the pandemic have caused cities to rethink their connectivity strategy. Fiber networks, again, are the supporting foundation to service delivery to the cities and communities at large

Smart city solutions across the board depend on reliable communications infrastructure. For each application there is an endpoint that then requires the data to be backhauled to the cloud. Data analysis for any real-time insights depends heavily on receiving the data in a timely fashion, edge computing and the analytic insights will falter without the speed and throughput delivered by a fiber backbone.

Smart Grid solutions, likewise, depend on reliable networking solutions that often times have latency requirements that can, in aggregate only be supported with fiber network connections. In large, 5G (5th Generation Cellular Technology), LPWAN(Low Power Wide Area Network) and WAN(Wide Area Network) technologies all depend on fiber networks to deliver their services and even more so if there are SLA’s (Service Level Agreement) associated with them

At the foundation of all of this, fiber networks are hugely important to delivering on the promises of Smart Cities, Smart Grid, Smart Building augmented with other wired and wireless technologies to improve cities and municipalities operational efficiency and improve the livability of citizens across the board.

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