Nokia announced a number of services intended to “solve challenges of urbanisation”, including a “sensing-as-a-service” option enabling operators to sell real-time environmental data and analytics to authorities.

With sensing-as-a-service, operators can use existing base station sites, with Nokia deploying sensors and integrating all available site equipment into an IoT real-time monitoring platform – collecting data which can then be sold. It uses blockchain to enable “smart contracts”: anonymised, private and secure micro-transactions which allow operators to monetise analysed data and generate new revenue streams.

Possible uses including detecting illegal construction, burning of rubbish, or unusual particles in the air.

Urban management
IoT for Smart Cities is described as a “fully-integrated, modular and scalable framework”, which enables operators and systems integrators to deliver unified smart city management while “unlocking new revenue streams by rapidly launching new services”.

The vendor said using cross-application data sharing, analytics and automation, an Integrated Operations Centre orchestrates all smart city operations for enhanced efficiency, faster responsiveness and improved decision making. Sample applications include video surveillance, smart lighting, parking, waste management and environmental sensing.

Phil Twist, VP of networks marketing at Nokia, said: “Part of the enablement here is launching the Integrated Operations Centre, which can provide a hub for these smart city IoT operations. Clearly, it’s not all Nokia, it’s a multi-vender system, it can work with whatever IoT application, but it’s a kind of architectural blueprint that puts the framework in place that lets a city build what it needs, scales-it up as it grows, and so-on.”

“It’s not just the connectivity piece, it’s also the platforms, the analytics, the applications, it’s the devices, it’s the security,” he continued.

Safety system
Also unveiled was S-MVNO, a secure MVNO for public safety platforms which enables operators to offer “mission-critical broadband services to public safety agencies”, generating new revenue streams.

The 3GPP-compliant service is said to help commercial networks to meet stringent requirements on availability, resilience, performance and security, while ensuring interoperability with existing legacy public safety networks. Nokia said it helps assure performance across the entire LTE network, including radio, backhaul and core.

“The service provider can offer a slice of their network, a secured layer, to a mission-critical public safety agency or something like that, so they don’t need to build their own infrastructure, they can have an LTE-based network but acting as a discrete, separate virtual network,” Twist said.

Such a system could “potentially” work across multiple service providers, he said, although “that’s not the starting point”.