Lack of uniform ICT solutions a risk for smart cities, says Trai

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), in a white paper issued on Tuesday, said there was a need to have a standardised information and communications technology (ICT) solutions for smart cities.

The regulator is of the view that lack of uniform solution can lead to proprietary issues and prevent integration for a seamless digital revolution in the urban infrastructure.

“Through our white paper, we are trying to caution the urban infrastructure developers that lack of planning can pose challenges in the future. If we want integrate smart cities in the future, we have to take a standardised approach for technology,” Trai Secretary S K Gupta told Business Standard.

“Such proprietary or non-standardised solutions have been created in silos and pose problems of inter-operability and prevent sharing of data amongst divergent applications,” Trai said in a wh­ite paper on ‘smart cities in India: framework for ICT infrastructure’. The regulator said non-standardised proprietary dev­ices and solutions had come up in the absence of regulation.

“In order to manage the ever-increasing population in the cities, it is important that infrastructure in cities are upgraded and managed by using ICT to make them sustainable in the long run. That is the context of this white paper,” Trai Chairman R S Sharma said.

The regulator observed: “The objective of smart city is to enhance quality of life of people and provide a clean and sustainable environment by establishing a common core infrastructure and deploying ‘smart solutions’ using digital infrastructure.”

It is essential to develop a standardised digital infrastructure with secure, reliable connectivity between offices to improve government’s efficiency and citizens’ access to services digitally, it said.

The standard reference architecture for smart infrastructure shall lead to savings and optimisation of capex and opex of the “Smart, Sustainable and Secure Cities”. 

It will also lead to significant reduction in the carbon footprint’ of ICT in any earmarked geographical territory.