BSNL EYING SMART CITY PROJECTS

The state-owned company BSNL is foraying its expertise of telecom business in smart city projects of central government.

Just on 17th October 2018 at the Rajkot Gujarat, BSNL demonstrated the POC ( Proof OF Concept) to the top authorities. The Rajkot Municipal Commissioner and Commissioner of Police headed the event. Also, the committee from RMC and professional consultant hired by Rajkot Municipal Corporation to analyze the performance of bidders was present at the event.

Night View Of The Rajkot City Gujarat

Top officials from BSNL were present at the event. Principal GM Rajkot, Shri A.K. Upadhyay, Principal GM Enterprise Business Gujarat Circle BSNL V. Ramesh, Dy. GM Enterprise Business Shri P. K. Shukla. Bsnl Rajkot Enterprise Business team worked day and night relentlessly to make this event a success.

There were other bidders apart from BSNL as a lead bidder. BSNL had worked out the entire smart city project in multiple parts and consortium partners with expertise in various fields.

BSNL's Smart City model

As we have witnessed and heard a lot about all telecom service providers revenues sank to one just one third. This is due to a fierce price war in the Indian telecom market. Corporate office BSNL Delhi worked out a plan to tap in additional revenues to fight the revenue crunch in BSNL.

Like all other telecom operators, BSNL  is even facing the immense heat of price war in the Indian Telecom market. This is also a kind of diversification in the right direction by BSNL in the like or adjacent field.

Key Features and Smart utility integration by BSNL.

BSNL along with its consortium partners showcased the following utility to be integrated with the smart city capability.

GIS  Geographical information system:

In this system, a given area or entire area of the city is scanned especially underground. All the utilities running beneath the ground surface is scanned. An ultrasonic or electromagnetic radar-like device creates the 3D map in software and that very map is then linked to the CCC (command and control center)  of the city.

With a click of a button as and when required information regarding the underground layout of any particular area can be obtained. This can ease giving permissions to agencies and other excavation-related works carried out in the city.

Smart hawkers prevention

In this utility, a camera is mounted in restricted areas of the city. The camera continuously keeps monitoring about timing and subject detection of the area under consideration. This will flag an alert whenever an illegal hawker is found in the prevention area or during the disallowed time. Many parameters can be set in this system.

The concerned Municipal officer's mobile will receive an alert about any objectionable hawker, along with map guidance to the place of illegal hawker presence. The system is smart and can differentiate between a car and a hawker. Also, the system is AI enabled meaning it will keep itself updating under various scenarios and become more and more intelligent over a period of time.

PIS and Smart Fare collection system

PIS stand for passenger information system. Passengers traveling by any public transport system will be given information of various parameters including the timing of buses on the BRTS route. It will also provide any alerts pushed from CCC about any emergency and things like that.

Smart fare collection system includes automated entry and exit while traveling form the BRTS route. This will include a ticket validation system. In future, it will be expanded to " Rajkot Mitra Card" a unified card to travel all across the Rajkot City without any cash just automated fare collection and charging across any public transport.

Smart Parking

In this system an automated fare collection is possible.  Real-time information of availability of parking slot at Corporation's parking lots. The system will facilitate to book a parking slot for your car remotely.

Public Address Systems

In this utility, a centrally controlled PA system is located at CCC. In case of emergency or in any need to inform people in any situation an announcement can be made from anywhere on any selected place from CCC. Announcements can be selective, meaning any particular place or in a group of places; an announcement can be made.

Automated Traffic Light Control

This is a very excellent feature of a smart city. At crossroads, we know that we Indians burn a lot of fuel along with wasting a lot of time. This system will help to achieve about 30% of saving in time and of course, fuel wastage will also go down with that.

What this system does is that it keeps a watch on traffic from all four lanes, there are smart sensors to understand the amount of traffic. Then in realtime, the system takes a decision to pause or release the traffic of anyone particular lane. And as claimed by system manufacturers and implementors it saves about 30% of the time by smart switching of traffic lights by adaptive switching in reference to real-time data of traffic.

All of the above smart facilities and utilities are concentrated at CCC. BSNL has incorporated Schneider as a CCC platform provider and integrator wherein all the utilities and services are integrated and monitored.

So there is still a lot more to Smart City that BSNL and its consortium partners can do. So I have given you the brief idea as what BSNL, a state-owned company is actively participating in for making its financial position strong in the market.

Do comment about this article and feel free to ask any questions related to the topic.