Smart city infrastructure forms the foundation for vibrant, connected communities, whether it’s powering a music festival in a park, supporting a busy downtown district, or powering a high-traffic intersection. Today residents, visitors, businesses and even municipal operations depend on seamless connectivity for everything from mobile maps and rideshare apps to point-of-sale systems, parking meters, and traffic cameras. Yet local cellular towers often lack the capacity or coverage to meet this growing demand.
Municipal Wi-Fi can bridge this gap and deliver reliable connectivity city-wide. However, many city leaders face familiar challenges: finding the funding, or justifying the expense alongside other needs, like water, sewage and public safety, vying for the same budget.
Though it may come as a surprise, solving connectivity challenges can lead to something greater–-scalable smart city infrastructure that not only generates revenue, but also reduces operational costs, enhances public safety, and improves overall quality of life for residents.
Smart City Infrastructure: Building the Municipal Backbone with Wireless Connectivity
Even for the smallest cities, the question is no longer whether to embrace these technologies, but how to implement them strategically and cost-effectively. The good news is that most smart tech implementations don’t require massive upfront investments or complete infrastructure overhauls.
In fact, they can begin modestly with strategic wireless deployments before evolving into a more comprehensive city-wide ecosystem. The key is to focus on building a unified, scalable and shareable backbone, starting with high-impact applications. Rather than building separate networks for each service, municipalities can leverage shared infrastructure that can virtually pay for itself.
Laying the Groundwork: Core Services and High-Impact Use Cases
Getting started with a smart city infrastructure initiative can feel daunting when there are so many conflicting priorities. But the most efficient implementations typically focus on six service areas that deliver immediate value.
Smart Transportation
Real-time public transit tracking, intelligent traffic management, and e-parking solutions are low-hanging fruit. Digital parking meters paired with wireless cameras can help drivers identify available parking spots to reduce traffic and pollution and eliminate manual meter collection. Transit monitoring can give residents an easier way to use public transportation that reduces traffic congestion, and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations can double as wireless nodes, helping to offset the cost of the infrastructure.
Municipal service monitoring
Air quality sensors, smart waste management systems, and water monitoring provide both regulatory compliance and operational efficiency. Smart waste bins that alert sanitation when they’re full optimize collection routes, reduce fuel costs and maintain cleaner public spaces. AI solutions that monitor utilities and air quality can detect anomalies and troubleshoot issues without dispatching an employee, drastically reducing costs to the city and taxpayers. Piggybacking on this hardware for additional wireless services extends the return on investment, all while improving residents’ health.
Energy Efficiency
Smart lighting alone, including switching to LED fixtures, has the potential to reduce energy costs by 70-75 percent and drastically lower maintenance costs. Motion sensors and dimmable lights can reduce burn time while still ensuring safety and visibility in neighborhoods and municipal structures. Smart streetlights can also serve as platforms for additional IoT devices, including embedded security cameras, environmental sensors and public Wi-Fi access points for residents and visitors.
e-Government Services
COVID-19 demonstrated the importance of digital government services, particularly for underserved communities. Deploying apps and online tools for digital permit applications, utility and service payments, and citizen engagement can improve access and service delivery while reducing administrative overhead. By allowing self-service for everyday activities, those resources devoted to manual processing can be redirected for additional infrastructure investments to expand smart city applications.
Public Safety
Smart city infrastructure enables a wide range of services to keep residents, first responders and service providers safe. Wireless cameras can provide “eyes” on high-traffic areas and work crews to monitor for accidents, crowd control and crime activity. Robust Wi-Fi can ensure adequate emergency response coordination, especially in dense areas where cellular signal capacity can easily get overwhelmed by a crowd. Dedicated networks can even be provisioned specifically for emergency services to avoid capacity conflict.
Public Wi-Fi
While this might seem like a “bonus” feature, providing free internet in public areas ensures equitable access to education, healthcare, transportation and social services. It also helps attract and retain residents and business investment. Companies base expansion and relocation decisions heavily on local quality of life, and smart cities with robust digital infrastructure have a leg up on attracting savvy investors.
The same is true for tourism. Unless you’re actively marketing your location as “off the grid,” visitors expect robust connectivity. And it’s an investment in tourism marketing: visitors can TikTok and Instagram their adventures more easily, raising your city’s profile among prospective visitors.
How Strategic Funding Makes Smart Cities a Reality
Municipal budgets face constant pressure, but smart city infrastructure can leverage multiple funding sources to generate maximum ROI:
- Existing budgets and infrastructure: Air quality monitoring may have dedicated environmental compliance funding, while water utilities often have security budgets for protecting infrastructure. Cities can also leverage smart poles and kiosks that provide street-corner IT infrastructure for surveillance, Wi-Fi, LTE or CBRS networks in remote areas. By designing infrastructure to serve multiple departmental needs, cities can pool these resources for broader application.
- Revenue generation: Smart parking meters, EV charging stations, and digital advertising partnerships with local businesses can generate direct revenue. Cities can sell business sponsorships and capture visitor data through captive portals, providing insights for tourism and local marketing opportunities.
- Partnerships: Private sector partnerships, particularly with automotive manufacturers who depend on EV infrastructure and telecommunications providers, can create data sharing opportunities that offset infrastructure costs.
- Federal programs: The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act budgeted $100 million per year through 2026 for smart community technology implementation, with the first round of applications averaging $1.54 million each. Additional grant funds through the Department of Energy, Transportation and Homeland Security can provide support for infrastructure in their respective areas that can be leveraged across other applications.
What’s Next: Smart City Infrastructure of the Future
In order to thrive, cities must view connectivity as a scalable tool for improving citizen services, operational efficiency, and economic development. The key is starting with clear objectives and expanding incrementally, while maintaining focus on outcomes that improve quality of life and prosperity for all residents.
For municipal leaders, building wireless infrastructure enables continuous innovation, creating cities that are not just smarter, but more livable, safer, sustainable, and equitable. Ready to get started, but not sure how? Feel free to reach out, Nomadix is here to help!
Angela Quinn is the Senior Director of Business Development – the Americas for Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company. She brings over 20 years of experience to her role and an extensive background in Cloud Analytics Software, Networking, Wireless, Data Center, and Security Software Solutions.
This article originally appeared on Government Technology Insider.