Saudi Telecom Company envisions marketplace for smart city services
A TM Forum Catalyst team is using the Forum’s assets to build an open platform for smart cities to pave the way for innovation at scale.
10 May 2019
Saudi Telecom Company envisions marketplace for smart city services
A TM Forum Catalyst team is using the Forum’s assets to build an open platform for smart cities to pave the way for innovation at scale.
Like many countries, Saudi Arabia is seeing increased levels of urbanization – a forecast from UN Habitat suggests that 97% of Saudi Arabian residents could live in urban areas 2030. Growth in the largest cities has been significant but smaller cities have seen similar rates of urbanization too.
This creates new challenges in cities and a need for more a sustainable society for citizens and businesses. In Saudi Arabia particularly, almost half of residents are under 24 years old. This young population creates additional demand for economic opportunities, jobs, housing and quality services.
A TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst, led by Saudi Telecom Company (STC), is tackling these challenges. The team is developing an open platform based on industry standards to drive multi-sided business models that support cities’ goals, provide enhanced smart city services to citizens, and enable businesses to innovate and generate new revenue in untapped markets.
STC says the timing is right for this approach, with 5G expected to boost the emergence of smart cities.
STC Group CEO, Nasser Sulaiman A. Al Nasser, commented: “One of the important areas in which 5G technologies will play a crucial role is the industrial internet of things (IIoT), which will boost the emergence of smart cities, asset tracking, smart utilities and security infrastructure (such as alarms or geo-fencing). Once everything is connected via 5G technology, new opportunities and developments will emerge and 5G applications will increase dramatically, making way for new services.”
He added that industry initiatives such as the smart city open platform (SCOP) marketplace being envisioned as part of this Catalyst, will “lay the foundations for telcos to move into the ongoing social phenomenon of citizen and city digitalization.”
The Catalyst will highlight new opportunities for telecom companies, such as STC, and their partners to use their assets to create enabling platforms in new verticals beyond the traditional communications sector.
According to MarketsandMarkets, the global market for smart city platforms will reach $223 billion by 2023 as cities try to develop capabilities that enable them to manage resources and deliver services in a world shaped by platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Google and Facebook.
The report notes: “The adoption rate of smart cities solutions is expected to grow, followed by increasing opportunity for platform providers owing to the growing implementation of integrated Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in smart cities.”
Telcos are well-placed to meet this platform demand. At a time when telecoms companies need to find new revenues as call and data profits flatline or fall, the ability to re-use their considerable assets and capabilities related to connectivity, inventory, CRM (customer relationship management), billing, partner management, security, identity management, catalog, order capture, orchestration etc. as enabling platforms in sectors such as smart cities offers a huge win-win for both sides.
For CSPs, platforms create new opportunities beyond just the network – for example in managed services, platform/toolkit services, data aggregation, security and more.
Cities will reach more citizens with services more cost-effectively and businesses will have the opportunity to grow much bigger and faster as the platform approach attracts exponentially more users. The integrated platform approach further creates opportunities for data monetization and a more granular level of customer and citizen segmentation.
Ali O. Al Rakban, CEO, Aqalat (a limited liability company founded by STC to develop and manage the its properties) commented: “Our vision is to enable smart cities which propel efficient city planning and transparent governance, and promote smart economy for local businesses by adopting the capabilities of STC.
“To overcome our prime challenge of high cost per smart initiative, we are collaborating with STC to enable a unified smart city platform which would bring down the entry barrier for our business partners to roll out smart services such as enriched parking and relevant services, and would promote innovation. Driven by the Saudi Vision 2030 of digitization, we are committed to proliferate its adoption and position our cities as vibrant and economically prospering cities to enrich quality of life.”
STC is the champion of the Smart City Ecosystem Enablement & Business Models Catalyst. Catalyst champions bring a business challenge they need to solve. Champions work alongside the Catalyst participants – in this case Cognizant, Sigma Systems, TCS and Oracle – to develop solutions to the specific challenge, with each providing a different piece of the solution puzzle.
Cognizant is setting the course of the Catalyst, analyzing, defining and finalizing the problem statement and use cases for the team. TCS and Oracle are conceptualizing and stitching together the overall solution, and Sigma is working on incorporating TM Forum assets and identifying the scope for contribution back to TM forum assets.
Platforms are not a new concept in smart cities but typically they have focused on governance and policy aspects, rather than services, says Bandar Aldawood, Director, STC.
The Catalyst’s platform is more of a marketplace – an open platform for smart city services. STC and the Catalyst participants don’t provide any inventory, but rather enable infrastructure for transactions between suppliers, producers and citizens.
Bandar explains: “For example, if a new provider has a new critical solution such as surveillance, they would on-board onto the platform to sell their surveillance as a service.”
“Previously we’ve had a lot of content developers trying to sell their services individually, but not finding any success. With the marketplace, it’s like a superstore,” he added.
The Catalyst’s approach also demonstrates the value of collaboration and not ‘reinventing the wheel’. If cities were to commission or build platforms from scratch, it would take too much time and cost more than most cities can afford.
Further, because the platform is open and based on TM Forum’s industry standards and best practices, the architecture and approach is repeatable, meaning it can be deployed across multiple cities and evolve over time. This makes it a much better business proposition for companies involved, more attractive to cities that are increasingly moving away from proprietary approaches and more enticing for solutions developers as they will be able to develop solutions once and deploy them in multiple markets.
The Catalyst team envisions that the platform will be as easy to use for both service providers and citizens. Solutions providers can sign up, publish their catalog and be matched with a consumer looking to buy the service. This could be digital offerings or a real-world service, such as car washing.
The Catalyst is using several TM Forum assets including ecosystem modeling tool Curate FX, Frameworx and Open APIs. The platform framework is based on the principles of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), which is a collaborative vision of a more agile replacement for traditional OSS/BSS architectures.
The team intends to feed what it learns back to the industry via a whitepaper as well as contributing insights and updates to TM Forum’s standards, best practices and toolkits.
To learn more, watch this video filmed at Digital Transformation World 2019:
Like many countries, Saudi Arabia is seeing increased levels of urbanization – a forecast from UN Habitat suggests that 97% of Saudi Arabian residents could live in urban areas 2030. Growth in the largest cities has been significant but smaller cities have seen similar rates of urbanization too.
This creates new challenges in cities and a need for more a sustainable society for citizens and businesses. In Saudi Arabia particularly, almost half of residents are under 24 years old. This young population creates additional demand for economic opportunities, jobs, housing and quality services.
A TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst, led by Saudi Telecom Company (STC), is tackling these challenges. The team is developing an open platform based on industry standards to drive multi-sided business models that support cities’ goals, provide enhanced smart city services to citizens, and enable businesses to innovate and generate new revenue in untapped markets.
STC says the timing is right for this approach, with 5G expected to boost the emergence of smart cities.
STC Group CEO, Nasser Sulaiman A. Al Nasser, commented: “One of the important areas in which 5G technologies will play a crucial role is the industrial internet of things (IIoT), which will boost the emergence of smart cities, asset tracking, smart utilities and security infrastructure (such as alarms or geo-fencing). Once everything is connected via 5G technology, new opportunities and developments will emerge and 5G applications will increase dramatically, making way for new services.”
He added that industry initiatives such as the smart city open platform (SCOP) marketplace being envisioned as part of this Catalyst, will “lay the foundations for telcos to move into the ongoing social phenomenon of citizen and city digitalization.”
A market worth billions
The Catalyst will highlight new opportunities for telecom companies, such as STC, and their partners to use their assets to create enabling platforms in new verticals beyond the traditional communications sector.
According to MarketsandMarkets, the global market for smart city platforms will reach $223 billion by 2023 as cities try to develop capabilities that enable them to manage resources and deliver services in a world shaped by platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Google and Facebook.
The report notes: “The adoption rate of smart cities solutions is expected to grow, followed by increasing opportunity for platform providers owing to the growing implementation of integrated Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in smart cities.”
Telcos are well-placed to meet this platform demand. At a time when telecoms companies need to find new revenues as call and data profits flatline or fall, the ability to re-use their considerable assets and capabilities related to connectivity, inventory, CRM (customer relationship management), billing, partner management, security, identity management, catalog, order capture, orchestration etc. as enabling platforms in sectors such as smart cities offers a huge win-win for both sides.
The power of the platform
For CSPs, platforms create new opportunities beyond just the network – for example in managed services, platform/toolkit services, data aggregation, security and more.
Cities will reach more citizens with services more cost-effectively and businesses will have the opportunity to grow much bigger and faster as the platform approach attracts exponentially more users. The integrated platform approach further creates opportunities for data monetization and a more granular level of customer and citizen segmentation.
Ali O. Al Rakban, CEO, Aqalat (a limited liability company founded by STC to develop and manage the its properties) commented: “Our vision is to enable smart cities which propel efficient city planning and transparent governance, and promote smart economy for local businesses by adopting the capabilities of STC.
“To overcome our prime challenge of high cost per smart initiative, we are collaborating with STC to enable a unified smart city platform which would bring down the entry barrier for our business partners to roll out smart services such as enriched parking and relevant services, and would promote innovation. Driven by the Saudi Vision 2030 of digitization, we are committed to proliferate its adoption and position our cities as vibrant and economically prospering cities to enrich quality of life.”
STC is the champion of the Smart City Ecosystem Enablement & Business Models Catalyst. Catalyst champions bring a business challenge they need to solve. Champions work alongside the Catalyst participants – in this case Cognizant, Sigma Systems, TCS and Oracle – to develop solutions to the specific challenge, with each providing a different piece of the solution puzzle.
Cognizant is setting the course of the Catalyst, analyzing, defining and finalizing the problem statement and use cases for the team. TCS and Oracle are conceptualizing and stitching together the overall solution, and Sigma is working on incorporating TM Forum assets and identifying the scope for contribution back to TM forum assets.
A smart city superstore for anything as a service
Platforms are not a new concept in smart cities but typically they have focused on governance and policy aspects, rather than services, says Bandar Aldawood, Director, STC.
The Catalyst’s platform is more of a marketplace – an open platform for smart city services. STC and the Catalyst participants don’t provide any inventory, but rather enable infrastructure for transactions between suppliers, producers and citizens.
Bandar explains: “For example, if a new provider has a new critical solution such as surveillance, they would on-board onto the platform to sell their surveillance as a service.”
“Previously we’ve had a lot of content developers trying to sell their services individually, but not finding any success. With the marketplace, it’s like a superstore,” he added.
The Catalyst’s approach also demonstrates the value of collaboration and not ‘reinventing the wheel’. If cities were to commission or build platforms from scratch, it would take too much time and cost more than most cities can afford.
Further, because the platform is open and based on TM Forum’s industry standards and best practices, the architecture and approach is repeatable, meaning it can be deployed across multiple cities and evolve over time. This makes it a much better business proposition for companies involved, more attractive to cities that are increasingly moving away from proprietary approaches and more enticing for solutions developers as they will be able to develop solutions once and deploy them in multiple markets.
Multi-sided platform
The Catalyst team envisions that the platform will be as easy to use for both service providers and citizens. Solutions providers can sign up, publish their catalog and be matched with a consumer looking to buy the service. This could be digital offerings or a real-world service, such as car washing.
The Catalyst is using several TM Forum assets including ecosystem modeling tool Curate FX, Frameworx and Open APIs. The platform framework is based on the principles of TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA), which is a collaborative vision of a more agile replacement for traditional OSS/BSS architectures.
The team intends to feed what it learns back to the industry via a whitepaper as well as contributing insights and updates to TM Forum’s standards, best practices and toolkits.
To learn more, watch this video filmed at Digital Transformation World 2019: