Nunes is the Business Development Director at the Technological Park of São José dos Campos and explains the benefits of connectivity in Smart Cities.
Brazil – Business Development Director at the Technological Park of São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil, Marcelo Nunes, has extensive experience with the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and 5G connectivity. He is an engineer and coordinator of the Brazilian Local Production Arrangements Program (APL) and the Information Technology and Communication APL at the Technological Park.
Marcelo talked with topin about the application of 5G connectivity in urban environments, based on his experience in São José dos Campos, and how communication between different vehicles, devices, and sensors can bring great advantages to people, companies, and the environment.
topin: How can the deployment of 5G networks benefit cities and turn them into Smart Cities? In your view, when could we have commercial applications of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication?
Marcelo Nunes: 5G has latency between 1 and 4 milliseconds, it is 100 times faster than 4G, and allows millions of IoT devices to connect simultaneously and with the same performance. All this capacity will drastically improve the quality of urban mobility and ensure greater security for the population in crime prevention and how people interact with public and private services. In the case of V2X, 5G is what will make it possible to use it for this type of application.
topin: What cases of automation and IoT use can already be cited as an example of the advantages of adopting connectivity for cities? Where were they deployed, and how were they received?
Marcelo Nunes: The use of IoT technology allows communication in endless possibilities. For example, apps for pets, ambulances, police vehicles, sending information, etc. The use of this technology on lampposts would allow monitoring all the examples above, identifying lost animals, vehicle flow, temperature, the sending of messages to tourists, in addition to measuring the lighting itself.
In the city of São José dos Campos, we rely on IoT technology. The startup Sigmais was responsible for installing it. In just three months, it installed more than 4 thousand devices, which are named Sigpark. They inform drivers where there is a higher concentration of available parking spaces in the city’s streets.
topin: What are the main players collaborating on this evolution, whether in the public or private sphere? Is there an understanding that there will be a satisfactory return on investment (ROI) after implementing the necessary infrastructure?
Marcelo Nunes: In addition to the large companies participating directly at a global level, such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm, operators are also largely responsible for the evolution of this technology – Vivo, Claro, among others.
On the government side, I see the work done, for example, by the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), within the legal framework of IoT. As well as on the side of the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI), with projects to create 5G testing environments in Brazil, executed by the Technological Park, and the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL), which regulates several fronts of the use of antennas and opened the 5G auction. I believe that this set of public and private players is causing us to have a broad spectrum of use of the technology.
As for ROI, we have not yet been able to expect this return because it will be extremely high. In this sense, it will be very important that small companies, the startups, create applications and have an environment to test them in several areas –such as health, safety, and mobility.
This is what will bring the return: applications using 5G and IoT technology because the impact on the end consumer – the general population, which uses cell phones and other devices with internet access – will not only be loading videos and downloading or watching streams faster; what will bring the main gain for the use of these technologies will be business-to-business (B2B) trade. So, creating applications, mainly for use in companies, will allow the investment to have the expected return faster.
topin: How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics contribute to optimizing the use of electricity in cities? Would this generate environmental benefits in addition to energy and financial savings? Is it possible to specify each one briefly?
Marcelo Nunes: For AI to have effective results in the issue of efficiency or optimization of power grids, there must be connectivity. Although it is possible to analyze and concentrate information in a database, it is necessary to collect it from the power grid – how many people are in an environment, the amount of light required for a given space –, and this can obviously bring energy and mainly financial savings, for the city and operators, which are the energy suppliers.
Regarding environmental gains, monitoring the entire network to provide better maintenance and, mainly, for the savings in energy use from the moment we evaluate it with AI can bring a much faster response to any use. And speaking of AI, bringing the issue of network use to the background, we must have the connectivity and conditions to monitor the network through telecommunication. It is a technology that will be enhanced with the use of 5G connection networks and IoT devices.
topin: What other applications, such as mission-critical and public security use cases, can be achieved using AI and 5G in everyday life?
Marcelo Nunes: The combination of 5G with Artificial Intelligence promises to be responsible for a great revolution, which will encompass Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), digital health, transportation, tourism, and everything else that involves data transfer for their expansion.
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It was the first technological park created in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The idea is to be a prominent agent in the development of the region where it is installed and throughout the Brazilian territory. New technologies, products, and processes are designed daily to innovate the country’s entrepreneurship with quality and knowledge.