21 March 2017, CeBIT, Hannover – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, and the towns of Rüsselsheim am Main, Kelsterbach and Raunheim have agreed on comprehensive cooperation for Smart City development. As part of the town network known as ‘Three Wins’, the three municipalities in the German state of Hessen, aim to provide businesses with the smart infrastructure that is required for the digital working environment of the future and are on their way to becoming a European model region for Smart City.

Smart City as a location advantage

Businesses need a strong infrastructure and settle where they find it. This increasingly includes Smart City infrastructure, as it provides companies with fast communications, fast information transmission and the availability of data to build intelligent business models, which are key factors in deciding on the location of a business. To position themselves well in the competition for future-proof businesses, the towns of the Three Wins network had already established a cooperation with ZTE in order to build a comprehensive Smart City region. The digital urban infrastructure will provide benefits to citizens, authorities and local companies. “Smart City is our number one future focus. We will be able to collect and deliver data that is urgently needed by businesses – from environmental to traffic data. Businesses need to stay ahead, and this is exactly what we want to ensure,” explained Thomas Jühe, Mayor of the town of Raunheim.

Fifteen projects selected

With the completion of the planning phase, the construction of concrete Smart City solutions will now begin. A total of 15 individual projects were selected which will be implemented in separate municipalities or at a cross-municipal level. In the projects – which comprise infrastructure measures as well as the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) – the three towns will install sensors to collect metadata. The data is processed in the Urban Operation Center (UOC) and made available to the citizens as well as businesses via a big data platform. “This includes solutions such as smart parking, smart street lights, smart metering (intelligent measurement of power and heat consumption) and public WLAN as well as other digital solutions which we want to implement over the coming months. These technologies will support our citizens as well as the urban authorities in the years to come,” said Manfred Ockel, Mayor of Kelsterbach.

Discussion of Smart City 3.0 at CeBIT

The additional benefits that Smart Cities can offer to companies were explained by Xu Ming, President of ZTE’s Strategy and Marketing Business, at the CeBIT Global Conference. Together with Patrick Burghardt, Lord Mayor of Rüsselsheim am Main, he presented his vision for the future of the Smart City in Europe: “We are happy to have won the towns of Rüsselsheim, Kelsterbach and Raunheim as three strong partners in the metropolitan region of Frankfurt am Main. The Smart City 3.0 solutions that we presented at CeBIT will bring the three towns closer to their goal of being an economically interesting location and become even more attractive for people to live there,” explained Mr. Xu Ming.

‘Smart City Experience Dome’ at Hessentag 2017

The project partners are planning a joint appearance on this topic at the Hessentag 2017 fair and festival, which will take place from 9 to 18 June in Rüsselsheim am Main. In the “Smart City Experience Dome”, Smart City technologies will be presented to a larger public for the first time in Germany and Europe. On this occasion, the citizens will experience first-hand how it feels to live and work in a Smart City. “We look forward to being able to create a ‘Smart City Experience Dome’ at the Hessentag event, in which we will be able to present our vision for the Smart City together with ZTE. This also fits very well with one of the leitmotivs of the Hessentag in Rüsselsheim: From worker’s town to think tank’,” explained the Lord Mayor of Rüsselsheim. “The cooperation with ZTE can also serve as a benchmark for other similar projects. This cooperation is very constructive because both parties want the same thing: to bring the future to town.”