Smart Cities Project Guide.pdf - Interreg IVB North Sea Region ...

Work package 4
Wireless City
(leader City of Groningen)
Mobile services are the future. Smart Cities’ partners are developing a
range of new and innovative services for mobile platforms, while testing and
evaluating new forms of urban wireless networks.
The wide use of mobile phones and the emergence of municipal wifinetworks
allows local governments to deliver new services, or to adapt
existing e-services to bring them closer to citizens or workers on the move.
Research shows that e-services enabled for mobile phone manage to reach
social groups who currently make limited use of public e-services.
Groningen is currently rolling out a municipal wireless network. Although
the network is only in the initial phases of deployment, it is already the largest
WiFi deployment in the Netherlands. When completed in 2011, this will be the
largest single sign-on WiFi deployment in Europe and will cover the whole of
the city of Groningen. Groningen is working with the local police service and
with local universities to develop new e-services that will use this network.
Bremerhaven has been working on the development of a tourist and
local information system to provide based on WiFi and with fixed and
mobile (bus based) access points to provide timely information to users.
Hardware and software techniques have been analysed and tested, while a
delivery partnership has been developed and links developed between local
stakeholders.
Norfolk County Council is also working to develop their wireless
infrastructure, with the aim of tackling the “final third” of households who
cannot afford broadband access and residents of rural areas where the
private sector would not normally provide a service because of high unit
costs.
Kortrijk is continuing to roll out a wireless network that now covers many
public buildings and part of Kortrijk’s city centre.
The lessons that have been learned and the services and technologies that
have been developed will be mainstreamed across the North Sea Region.
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