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Connectivity is the backbone of cities. But in the era of AI, big data, IoT, and smart city technologies, connectivity is costing cities millions. Furthermore, urban networks are struggling to keep up with the bandwidth that cities need to deploy advanced tech.
Traditional 5G business models — where governments hire services from telcos and big tech, still prevail. However, some cities are turning the page and building their own private 5G to get the bandwidth they need to innovate.
Is the future of 5G private? Let’s examine one test case.
Brownsville, Texas, Sets the Stage for a Smart City Future
On September 3, the southern border city of Brownsville, Texas, announced they had selected NTT DATA — a global digital business and IT services leader, to deploy a private 5G smart city solution.
The Mayor of the City of Brownsville, John Cowen, Jr., recognized the 5G project’s potential for innovation.
“The future is coming to life in Brownsville today as we partner with NTT DATA to set a new standard for smart, connected, and sustainable cities.
“Ultimately, we’re seeking to reinvent human-to-digital interactions in ways that deliver amazing citizen services and an outstanding quality of life.”
NTT DATA, which deployed the largest 5G private network in the U.S. in the city of Las Vegas in 2022, is now working to empower Brownsville with state-of-the-art tech.
The small but historical city of Brownsville, known, among other things, for being the home to SpaceX‘s South Texas launch site, Boca Chica, is gearing to level up.
Its new private 5G will drive citizen services, be used to increase public safety, monitor sustainability, and leverage real-time data analytics and artificial intelligence over a powerful and reliable wireless network.
A Look Under Brownsville’s 5G Network Hood
Techopedia sat with Parm Sandhu, Vice President Enterprise 5G Products and Services of NTT DATA, to understand the government-telco dynamics and their evolution.
He said:
“Cities are increasingly looking for private wireless networks for machine-to-machine connectivity requirements.
“Enhanced smart city use cases such as traffic monitoring and management, security, and safety rely on machine vision applications requiring high bandwidth which are very costly to deploy over public networks.”
Compared to public networks provided by regional telcos, private networks offer increased ownership.
With this comes dedicated spectrum, control, agility, security, reliability, high bandwidth, and lower deployment costs with more reasonable, controlled ongoing costs.
Sandhu from NTT DATA explained that while private wireless networks use the same technology as public mobile networks — including small cell radio infrastructure and cloud-based orchestrators for network management support and operations — they can empower innovation because they provide dedicated ownership.
NTT DATA will begin with an initial phase focusing on Brownsville’s downtown, which includes public parks, the Department of Public Works Yard, and the city’s airport.
Soon Brownsville will have the network, Internet of Things, and edge-cloud platform to analyze how the city’s facilities are used, monitor crowds for planning management, and gain environmental intelligence for indoor and urban air quality monitoring.
Additionally, through its 5G, Brownsville will gain critical insights on public transportation occupancy, allowing the government to adjust services and inform travelers, as well as respond to unsafe situations and prevent incidents.
Modern traffic management is also on the agenda, including prevention and response to unsafe driving and leveraging traffic trend data for improved mobility and urban planning.
Why Cities Are Building Their Own 5G Networks
Traditionally, private companies provide internet and wireless connectivity to governments. Companies like Google Fiber, for example, provide internet to a wide range of city governments. Similarly, other telcos, such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Vodafone, connect government urban operations.
However, the costs of connecting urban management systems are not cheap. For example, the City of New York’s annual 2024 budget for IT was set at $697.4 million, with 17% going to the traditional ‘911 Emergency Call Center’ and 46% of the total budget going to general ‘Tech Services’.
Cities are beginning to build their own 5G network not only to save millions in internet bills.
Officials are becoming aware that public networks cannot support the innovation that modern smart cities require.
Sandhu from NTT DATA broke down the issue for Techopedia.
“Traditional public networks are built for consumer applications and are often inadequate in supporting new technology and application requirements in smart cities.”
Sandhu explained that public networks are designed for mass market consumer needs, and these networks can suffer from bandwidth limitations and interference due to a high number of users in the same area competing for resources.
“Additionally, these (public) networks are unable to provide the reliability, security, control and service level requirements for dependable smart city applications.”
Tim Kravchunovsky, founder and CEO of Chirp, an enterprise IoT provider and global LoRaWAN, LoRa2.4 and cellular carrier, spoke to us about the costs of connectivity for governments.
“The traditional telecom model of relying on third-party telecoms can be very expensive because providers often have a (near) monopoly in the given area.”
“As a result, they often charge through the nose for access to their infrastructure, and even more for access to premium services, like low-latency networks as bandwidth demand increases,” Kravchunovsky said.
“So cities and municipalities end up being slaves to these telecom monopolies.”
Kravchunovsky said that while a private 5G network will have significant initial set-up costs, it puts control in the hands of the municipal government.
“If built well, such networks can provide enhanced safety, protecting the city from data breaches (which we have seen a lot recently with traditional telecoms like AT&T),” Kravchunovsky said.
The Potential of Private 5G Networks to Transform Cities
Swarun Kumar, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told Techopedia that the costs of connectivity for governments will depend on the scale of the project and availability of third-party providers.
“Usually, when connecting a relatively small network in an area with extensive coverage from third-party telcos, leveraging telcos makes the most economic sense.”
Kumar said that cities can in the long term be compensated by cost savings if the network is large enough to balance out the expense that third-party providers represent.
“In my view, both telcos and private 5G networks will co-exist and have their own ‘customer base’.”
Kravchunovsky from Chirp added that traditional telecom networks rely on a great deal of legacy infrastructure, which makes them slow and unwieldy. This is particularly evident as smart cities of the future are developed, powered by AI, autonomous robots, and advanced healthcare solutions.
Miles Ward, Chief Technology Officer at SADA, an IT and cloud services company, also spoke to Techopedia about the use cases that private 5G networks can drive.
“Sensor networks can enable better floods, storms, earthquake, and disaster management; camera networks can deliver better traffic management and accident response, and city workers can get reliable access to data on mobile devices when in the field to make work quicker.”
“5G private networks can also drive smarter lighting, more predictive maintenance ( water-sewer telemetry), and infectious disease monitoring and alerting,” Ward said.
“Also, critically, in emergencies, commercial networks can be overloaded by normal residential usage, whereas a private network can be better segmented to preserve first-responder communication channels in a crisis.”
The Challenge of Universal Access to Internet
Universal high quality access to the internet is gaining momentum across the world. Seoul, South Korea, with 99.9% internet penetration rate, is the city closest to universal access. Singapore and Tokyo follow will 88.4% and 93.3% internet penetration rates, respectively.
In the U.S. New York City leads the way nationally, but only has a 88.2% internet penetration rate. Still, this number is significantly higher than most U.S. cities, especially in the southern and midwestern areas.
Are City Government-owned private 5G networks the key to unlocking universal access?
Sandhu from NTT DATA told Techopedia that the Brownsville Texas 5G network will improve access for citizens.
“We see these technologies improving underserved resident’s access to the Internet throughout more public areas, allowing for them to stay always connected with fast, reliable and secure internet service.”
On the other hand, Kravchunovsky from Chirp said private 5G networks could unlock universal access.
“Yes, private networks can help achieve this goal, as long as their interests are aligned with the public, and not with profits.”
The Bottom Line
Private 5G networks pose challenges, up-front costs, and technical difficulties. While private 5G is not a silver bullet for every urban problem, they do represent an opportunity to drive innovation for the benefit of citizens.
Having the right infrastructure in place to support the most advanced technologies will not only be essential in the very near future, but it will also be the norm. As AI, industrial automation and robotics, IoT, smart cars, and cities grow, cities can benefit in many ways by taking full ownership of their networks.
