Huawei Technologies has focused attention towards the setting up of Smart Cities in several Asia-Pacific region countries including Sri Lanka.
Huawei Southern- East Asian Region Group CTO and Executive Consultant Michael MacDonald in an interview with Daily News said that Huawei has planned to strengthen ongoing development activities in Asia- Pacific Region countries by setting up Smart Cities. “Sri Lanka too has been identified.
MacDonald said a Smart City is a one that leverages information, Communication and data technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government processes, enhance the flow of information and ultimately improve the lives of the citizens living in Smart cities.
Asked whether the Sri Lankan Government makes any request from Huawei to set up Smart Cities in the country MacDonald said Huawei is always eager to participate in Smart City projects and can play the role of infrastructure provider for network such as ICT, IoT and cloud facilitator for ecosystem development or simply trusted advisor for experience sharing.
MacDonald also highlighted the advantage of setting up a `Smart City’ in a developing country like Sri Lanka and said that citizens could reap large benefits of having Smart cities in their cities.
“Smart cities could provide many important services and improvements to suburban and rural populations and it would also help to attract foreign business by acting as a gateway between the larger base of citizens and the connected world,”
He said Huawei has provided the services to over 200 Smart City projects all over the world and this has already benefitted over 400 million people in thirty countries worldwide. He said among the countries Huawei has provided large scale services to thickly populated cities in Longgang, China, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia and in Gelsenkirchen in Germany where citizens reap large benefits from the Smart city concept.
Asked whether a developing country like Sri Lanka needs `Smart Cities’ MacDonald highlighted that developing countries can benefit even more from Smart Cities as each solution component will significantly elevate the effectiveness of government services. He said in Kenya, Huawei’s command center and IoT are aligned with their national strategy to protect Kenyans, the promotion of tourism and encourage foreign economic investment.
“In many countries throughout Asia, cloud data centers are being used to consolidate information and provide a single window and instance of data across multiple departments and in turn making the processing of vital government documents and applications traceable and faster.