Throughout the world, real estate is going through a major transformation. New cities are being created where the network and services running through them are integral to their design and operation. Technology will improve life for the office worker and resident alike, enhance building performance and conserving energy.

Our vision of the Smart City is an environment designed to attract knowledge and talent from around the world and to spur innovation and creativity. The goal is to promote education, art, science, medicine, industry, environment conservation, transportation, social communications and public administration to enhance urban life. In Smart Cities people will move around, learn, consume and interact through the use of advanced technologies that have a social dimension, are location-aware, mobile and reactive. Smart Cities are the future of urban development.

Orange has the vision

Creating the Smart City is a complex process that requires a completeness of vision: it needs a network, billing system and order process that can grow as the city grows and adapt to new, as yet unthought-of services. From design and build, through to operations and maintenance, Smart Cities require an operator partner with vast experience of technology, marketing customer service and innovation.

Orange Business Services has the experience and vision to make this happen. We bring a depth of skills not available on the open market, and economies of scale to ensure the best-value capital purchases. By working with us, property developers can concentrate on their core activity – building the future cities – while enjoying the on-going service revenues that will speed up overall return on investment.

Next-generation network
A Smart City requires a high capacity backbone network to support future demand. A city-wide fiber network supporting IP technology ensures that every office, apartment, shopping outlet and community center benefits from ultra-fast broadband connections to the Internet and the network control centre.

Home automation
In the Smart City, residents are able to connect to the network instantly, accessing millions of games, films, music tracks and countless other services. They can turn on the air conditioning from their mobile phone or check the family is safe by remotely accessing a home set-top camera. Assistive technology can give greater independence to the elderly or disabled. A home hub could wirelessly link multiple PCs and PDAs to high-definition television, video and radio, with multimedia services like online gaming and music downloading available on demand. The Smart City extends all of the home automation capabilities to outside of the home and users' profile can follow them to any terminal within the Smart City.

Smart businesses
In a Smart City, multisite businesses can network voice, video and business-critical enterprise applications. With the help of an international carrier, these can run seamlessly across corporate wide area networks (WAN) on different continents for intranets and secure collaboration, email and voice mail, conference calls and instant messaging. Unified communications makes it easy for employees to hot desk or work remotely. Managed firewalls, anti-virus, storage area networking, remote access, messaging, and web hosting can all be added.

Smart hotels
Hotels in a Smart City can offer guests video-on-demand and IPTV in addition to office services like video-conferencing, which can be billed on a per-use or monthly basis. In public spaces plasma televisions, wireless access, digital signage and virtual reception are all linked to the city-wide network. Add to these point-of-sale terminals in bars and restaurants, a front office booking suite, automated check-in and smart-card room locks. Room comfort settings can be delivered over IP phones and smart bathrooms let management know when supplies run short.

Shopping malls
Malls and souks can use multiple VoIP phones and business application on corporate intranets to check stock availability. They can stream video feeds on to in-store display screens and security cameras as well as chip-and-pin machines and electronic payment terminals.

Smart buildings
Office buildings already contain a number of networks: fire alarms, security alarms, door access controls, utilities monitoring, lighting systems, lifts, the heating and ventilation – a complex environment with high installation costs and limited automation. These services can all be run over the same network, delivering better performance for less cost. Accurate information gives owners the ability to save energy by offsetting peak loads. Intelligent buildings know when to turn off lights or turn down the cooling system and even before they are completed, developers are able to adjust internal temperatures for the comfort of building workers.

Smart government & public services
Road traffic can be reduced by providing online access to voting, birth certificate applications, tax payments and so on. On-campus hospitals can be created with telemedicine in mind – outpatients can have their heart rates, blood pressure, insulin levels monitored and recorded remotely with the vital statistics fed into telemedicine control systems. Schools and universities in the Smart City support distance learning and rich media, and lectures with professors around the world can be conducted via telepresence. In the Smart City, smart government and public services mean the pubic are healthier, better educated, there is less crime and disasters can be prevented or mitigated.