“Across the globe governments and municipalities are looking at the next generation of communication and information networks and how they can use this infrastructure to help build a smart city,” says Eira Hayward in the new issue of Mobile Europe (“Telcos look for capital gains from smart cities”).

The article talks about the political will (as well as the business case) required for cities to invest in and attract smart infrastructure, quoting Deutsche Telekom’s Thomas Kiessling who points out: “The individual departments cannot remain cut off from one another. They must be connected in order to realise the full potential of the Internet of Things and create synergies. These include not only cooperation between different departments but also participation of citizens in innovation processes. To build such bridges, open platforms and open standards must be used. That is the only way to ensure that people and city data remain combinable in the long term.”

Ovum’s Stuart Ravens emphasises that “each city, given its unique circumstances, will develop differently”, adding that the need is for “a set of reusable applications, platforms, services, open APIs and open standards” to allow for the smart city benefits that come from being joined up.

Sounds rather like VITAL? The full article can be read here - you may have to register to access it.