21.3.2016
- By the Agreement on Cooperation between HT and the City of Dubrovnik, HT, as a technology leader, supports Dubrovnik's candidature for the title of the European Capital of Culture·
- Dubrovnik has become the T-City, an innovation, testing, and reference Smart City Centre of Hrvatski Telekom
Markus Wissmann, Andro Vlahušić, Davor Tomašković and Saša Kramar
Today, Hrvatski Telekom and the City of Dubrovnik signed an Agreement on Cooperation as part of the project of Dubrovnik's candidature for the title of the European Capital of Culture 2020, which positioned HT as the City's technology partner in projects that are going to change Dubrovnik's future. After the signing of the Agreement, Davor Tomašković, President of the Management Board of HT, and Andro Vlahušić, Mayor of Dubrovnik, have jointly opened the Smart Street at Obala Stjepana Radića, a pilot project developed in strategic partnership with IT company CISCO, and in collaboration with local partners.
The pilot project, worth more than HRK 1.5 million, is part of the comprehensive Dubrovnik Smart City project, thanks to which Dubrovnik has become the T-City, the first innovation, testing, and reference Smart City Centre of Hrvatski Telekom.
“Dubrovnik is a world-renowned tourist gem, a unique city and museum, and, by means of the Dubrovnik Smart City project and Hrvatski Telekom as technology project owner, it has also become a city of the future. We will be proud to bring national and international partners to Dubrovnik and let them experience technological innovations and solutions that, being interconnected, will change the citizens’ culture of living and quality of life. By this step forward in our operations, we wish to send a clear message that HT is not only the technology leader, but also a leader of social changes in Croatia”, said Davor Tomašković, President of the Management Board of Hrvatski Telekom.
Hrvatski Telekom is the third telecommunications operator in the European Union to have completed the IP migration project; therefore, essential infrastructure prerequisites have been created for the implementation of smart solutions and further development. The Smart Street is a pilot project representing synergy of a variety of ICT solutions and is based on the Cisco Digital Platform.
"We are extremely proud to witness the launch of Croatia's first Smart Street in Dubrovnik. Deutsche Telekom is working on several smart city initiatives all around Europe with our partners, focusing on the areas of smart lighting, smart parking and Wi-Fi implementations to showcase our capabilities in the digital transformation of cities based on our powerful integrated Pan-European network" , says Ralf Nejedl, Senior Vice President B2B & ICT at Deutsche Telekom, who was also present at the opening.
“The smart solutions applied in this Street will directly deal with the citizens’ day-to-day problems, such as traffic jams in the city and the search for parking spots, which will improve the quality of life in Dubrovnik and at the same time generate savings for the City in terms of energy and finance. We will continue to work on the comprehensive Dubrovnik Smart City project, in strategic collaboration with Hrvatski Telekom, in order to extend smart solutions to the entire city area of Dubrovnik,” said Mayor Andro Vlahušić.
Technology foundation for Smart Street in Dubrovnik is CISCO Digital Platform, an open, scalable, secure and manageable environment for integrating various solutions and applications. The Smart street features public lighting with multifunctional sensory network, and a variety of access technologies, from optical links and 4G network to the Wi-Fi network, thanks to which, from now on, the residents and visitors of Dubrovnik will have free of charge Internet access at the Pilot’s footprint, providing high speed and throughput (50 Mbit/s). A part of the Smart Street refers to the traffic solution that will use cameras to identify traffic violations, and the Street also features innovative parking technology, a world premiere, that will automatically recognize vehicles and perform contactless charging of parking fees and that will, both via smartphone application and via digital panels, provide real-time information on the parking vacancy status in the Smart Street, but also all over Dubrovnik. An important part of connected solutions in the Street is the monitoring and control of environmental parameters that will provide very useful data, something we were not even able to imagine before.
All solutions are connected with the city’s legacy systems, and Cisco Digital Platform will keep all collected data open for development of new solutions.
"On the way to digitization, data becomes the most strategic asset. The ability to secure the data, act on the data, and deliver services based on the data will determine success. Cities like Dubrovnik are also benefiting from connecting data, people, processes, and things. They can make more informed decisions, deliver new services and open new ways to communicate and interact with citizens. Cisco is proud to partner with the City of Dubrovnik and Croatia Telekom on Croatia's first Smart Street pilot”, said Markus Wissmann, CISCO Director of Sales Smart Cities EMEAR.
In the implementation of this project, Hrvatski Telekom has partnered with Combis, Sensity, Zumtobel, RAO, Mobilisis, SmartSense, Elektroteam, and many others. HT is constantly extending the partner network, incorporating renowned national companies and startups that are able to make a high-quality contribution to the development of this technological framework.