Nokia and the government of Sendai will focus on public safety and disaster recovery among other smart city initiatives
Nokia and the city of Sendai, Japan, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to deliver technology solutions for local businesses as they recover from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, while contributing to improvements in the quality of life for citizens.
The agreement covers public safety management, including disaster recovery, activities to improve the safety and security of local citizens, and the testing and development of multi-access edge computing (MEC) and 5G applications within the city.
Under the terms of the MoU, Nokia will establish as a long-term strategic partner to the city, which continues to recover from the major natural disasters of 2011. The two parties plan to stage a joint disaster exercise in 2018, and will collaborate on public safety innovation and development. Nokia and Sendai will also co-establish a test bed for MEC and 5G applications to accelerate related use cases.
The goal is to “help us create a safer and more secure city environment for the citizens of Sendai, easy and quick access to the foreign IT market, as well as provide a MEC/5G test platform for mid-small size businesses and start-ups. Sendai already has existing MoUs with NTT DoCoMo and Oulu in Finland, and the idea is to gain further synergies with the new agreement with Nokia,” Semdai’s Mayor Kazuko Koori, sais.
“We are honored to be selected as a strategic partner to help the city of Sendai continue their recovery and deploy our wide portfolio of technologies for crucial disaster management and recovery initiatives,” Nokia Japan’s head Jae Won, said. “Nokia is helping many cities in the world with their smart city transformation, such as Bristol in the U.K., Tampere in Finland, and Dubai in the UAE – and now the businesses and communities in Sendai will benefit from our technology expertise.”
Nokia partners with Bosch to target the IIoT market
In related news, Nokia and Bosch have announced a strategic partnership to enable enterprises and communications service providers to deploy industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions.
The two companies said that initial work will focus on asset tracking, predictive maintenance and environmental monitoring use cases, with the companies currently doing several customer trials in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nokia and Bosch also said that the solution will be commercially available in early 2018. Nokia will provide its IoT connectivity while Bosch will provide smart sensors.
