AT&T is partnering with the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) on the agency’s Smart City Challenge with a pledge to provide the winning city with $1 million in hardware, products and/or services.
The Smart City Challenge is designed to convert one city into the first in the nation to fully integrate technologies, such as smart sensor and connected vehicles, into their transportation system. Seven cities have been named finalists – Portland, Kansas City, Columbus, San Francisco, Denver, Austin and Pittsburgh – and the winning city will be announced this month.
“The Department is incredibly excited about this new partnership with yet another innovative company, which further exemplifies the excitement that this Challenge is generating nationwide,” says Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx. “The finalist cities have proposed incredibly bold vision for the future of their transportation systems. I’m confident that with the aid of the cutting-edge technologies and tools being offered by our partners, each city will be successful in bringing their inspiring plan to life.”
AT&T says it is ready to provide the winning city with connectivity services including cellular, Wi-Fi and wireline, in addition to products and services such as “Internet of Things” security consulting and big data analytics for traffic modeling and forecasting.
“Joining the Smart City Challenge is another way we’re working to promote and drive adoption of smart city solutions,” says Mike Zeto, general manager and executive director, AT&T Smart Cities. “We recognize that each of the contest finalists has a unique vision for how they want to transform their city’s transportation network, which is why we’ll be working with the winner to help them select the services and solutions they need AT&T to provide so they can build the smart city of their dreams.”
Other Smart City Challenge partners include Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc., Amazon Web Services, Mobileye, Autodesk, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs and NXP. More details about the Smart City Challenge are available transportation.gov/smartcity.