SmartHive xG offers industry blueprint for 5G smart city deployments

Commercial context

For CSPs, one of the primary opportunities presented by 5G is its potential to generate new revenue streams amid significant commercial challenges like high churn rates in mobile services and stagnant average revenue per user (ARPU). This potential is especially pronounced in smart city deployments, where there is a growing demand for large-scale 5G implementations to connect a wide variety of services across multiple vertical markets and applications. In these projects, CSPs can play a pivotal role—not just as providers of connectivity and services, but as essential coordinators on which all other partners depend. They can also, with the right AI-driven simulation capabilities, overcome barriers to crucial investment requirements by providing the insights needed for the building of confident business cases.

However, without a proven blueprint that can be applied to both new and existing urban infrastructure, CSPs have yet to fully capitalize on these advantages. The SmartHive xG project addresses these challenges by developing an AI-powered platform business model designed for the deployment of cost-effective 5G use cases in smart city environments. By focusing initially on Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka—a new 2.7 km² reclaimed city—the project aims to create a standardized, interoperable solution that enables CSPs to monetize their 5G investments. This strategic shift is crucial for CSPs to sustain growth and improve financial metrics such as gross profit, margin, and net profit after tax (NPAT).

The solution
At the core of the SmartHive xG project, which won a 2024 Catalyst Award in the Best Moonshot Catalyst – Growth Challenge category, is a bespoke platform business architecture built using TM Forum assets, including the Open Digital Architecture (ODA), Open APIs, and the Ecosystem Modeling Framework. These tools accelerate 5G project delivery by facilitating zero-touch partnering, enabling a streamlined process for integrating smart city vertical partners, such as those in eHealth and EdTech. The platform also uses AI to provide end-to-end visibility into B2C, B2B, and B2B2X customer transactions, enhancing service offerings and operational efficiency, and offering AI-driven actionable insights to key stakeholders. It enables AI-driven dashboards for city operations - helping to make possible city-wide processes which could be prohibitively expensive and complex if reliant on human management - as well as supporting AI-based marketing campaigns, and virtual assistance for business operations using generative AI.

The platform also equips CSPs with digital twin for decision intelligence (DT4DI) capabilities to simulate and predict revenue streams before activating new platforms or proceeding with new use cases – this enhances CSPs’ competitiveness by allowing them to target specific markets more effectively, and thereby ultimately improves their profitability. DT4DI assets and services can also be offered to client organizations across business, corporate and public sectors, allowing CSPs to help enterprise customers enhance their own business intelligence processes, maximizing revenue growth and customer experience improvements.

Another central feature of the platform is its ability to help CSPs monetize 5G network slices by bundling them with vertical-specific solutions. This capability is crucial for CSPs transitioning to become platform orchestrators who connect partners and customers, facilitating real-time engagement, partner management, and order management. The use of TM Forum's eTOM processes ensures comprehensive support for sales channel enablement, product configuration management, customer QoS, and SLA management. These processes also provide enhanced capabilities for service configuration and order handling, tailored to the unique needs of sectors such as healthcare, education, and enterprise services.

Wider application and value

For CSPs, the Catalyst is a golden opportunity to combat long-term challenges and improve subscriber growth, churn reduction, revenue diversification, and improved ARPU. Part of the strategic value of this Catalyst for CSPs lies in how it can be used to forge partnerships within smart city ecosystems – and importantly enable CSPs to become a relationship broker for the entire industry. This is ultimately a win-win situation for all stakeholders, who in many cases can benefit from assistance in how they form technology parentships and with whom. Enhanced efficiency and cost optimization are achieved through zero-touch partnering and fulfilment models, which streamline service delivery and reduce operational costs. According to Lapologang Kenyafetse, Project Manager and New Revenue Streams Lead at Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited, “SmartHive xG projects aim to foster a significant surge in revenue in the long term by helping CSPs to build partner-focused business models for smart city deployments.”

The potential impact of the SmartHive xG Catalyst extends far beyond the telecommunications industry. It can play a role in helping CSPs reach broader industry goals and contribute to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG4 (Quality Education). In healthcare, the platform could address critical issues such as the lack of medical coverage and access to facilities. By integrating digital health services, the project could contribute to better management of non-communicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. In education, the platform supports future-proofed offerings, improving completion rates and skill proficiency metrics. By enabling anytime, anywhere access to affordable healthcare and education, the project supports societal growth and inclusion, providing a crucial means to bridge the digital divide globally when it is badly needed.