Written by: Ali Ibrahim
Impaakt is a crowd-sourced, collaborative platform that relies on collective intelligence to produce high-quality impact analyses and scores available to all of us, for free.
Around 55% of the world’s population reside in cities around the world. The number of people living in cities will be reaching 68% by 2050. Around 2.5 Bn people are projected to get added to the urban population by 2050. As the urban population is increasing, there is a necessity to transform cities into smart cities where resources are utilized optimally.
Internet of Things (IoT) is a connected network of a large number of devices through which data can be transferred seamlessly. IoT can be leveraged to transform an urban area into a smart city. IoT plays an important role in improving the efficiency of smart cities by effective management of traffic, reduction of pollution, and improved safety. 5th generation mobile network (5G) also augments efforts to develop smart cities by offering scalable connectivity across the city.
China Mobile is one of the leading telecommunication service providers across Mainland China and Hong Kong. As of 2019, the company is estimated to have around 456,239 employees and 950 Mn customers. China Mobile spearheads smart city development through the latest technologies such as 5G and IoT.
As of 2019, China Mobile has 884 Mn IoT connections. It also deployed 50,000 5G base stations and offers 5G services to more than 50 cities. The company, through its innovation hub called “And-Creation,” incubated projected related to smart cities and IoT. As of 2019, 40 such projects were incubated. In 2018, The company implemented IoT based smart parking system in 4,000 spaces of Yunnan province. In Southeast Guizhou, its smart parking system connected more than 300 parking bays. The smart parking system implemented by the company reduced power consumption and reduced costs.
China Mobile contributed positively to the goal of smart cities by offering cutting-edge technology such as IoT and 5G. It can further maximize its impact by expanding its projects to more cities.
