Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei has revealed that it hopes its plans to digitize a German city can be used as a model to be replicated all across Europe if the project is a success. Huawei recently launched its innovative and cutting-edge Rhine Cloud platform which it claims can build smart city applications.
Duisburg, which is located in the western part of Germany, has agreed to partner with Huawei and domestic technology subsidiary DU-IT on the ambitious project which will see Huawei attempt to digitize its infrastructure after it signed an MoU with the city in January.
It has been predicted that the city's residents should brace themselves for more frequent Wi-Fi hotspots, intelligent learning tools and smart traffic management as a result of the implementation of the digitization program. Huawei has declared that the Rhine Cloud solution- which is its smart city and public services cloud platform will provide support to other providers in order to introduce digital applications.
President of Huawei for Western Europe, Vincent Pang said the primary objective of this project is to build an intelligent city which can be replicated all across the continent.
Pang said, "Earlier this year, we signed the MoU with the Mayor of Duisburg, aiming to build a fully-connected and digital city to boost the economy, and to build a better, intelligent city - improving the living qualities of the citizens. With Huawei's cutting-edge technology, we are confident with the cooperation of Duisburg this will become a big milestone for digital transformation in smart cities."
The Chinese vendor has said its smart city services are prominent in more than 120 cities across the world, and indicated that its plans to digitize Duisburg is being used a test run for expanding its smart city services on a larger scale.
Duisburg's Head of Digitization, Martin Murrack said the initiative would serve as a benchmark for the rest of Europe in terms of what can be achieved in the smart city space.
He said, "The parties have signed an MoU a couple of months back, and adhere to use the cutting-edge technologies of Huawei to digitalize and modernize Duisburg, and make it an ICT project for the whole of the western European area. We're expecting Huawei to contribute its 5G and cable-less broadband to the project," he continued, adding that he hopes the project will "improve the quality of life for our citizens as well as boosting our economy".