Moving the Ball Forward on 5G Testing for Smart Cities
The partnership among the town, T-Mobile and Georgia Tech represents a unique alliance that is seeking to draw on the resources of each to push the boundaries of 5G innovation.
The ATDC will provide management, startup classes and event planning, plus other services for entrepreneurs.
“It’s very unique to have a public entity — the city of Peachtree Corners, an academic institution like Georgia Tech — and then a commercial provider, T-Mobile, come together, with overlapping interests, and decide to work together to help not only figure out some of the innovation about what 5G will bring us in the future, but to together, help whoever it is that’s coming up with this technology to get from Point A to Point B,” Betsy Plattenburg, executive director of the Curiosity Lab, tells Government Technology.
MORE FROM STATETECH: How is Columbus, Ohio, helping residents with its smart mobility projects?
T-Mobile will provide not just the network but staff with 5G network expertise. “So, if you have a concept but you don’t know much about 5G, we actually have the expertise to help you literally and figuratively connect to it and figure out how it works and how it might advance your technology,” Plattenburg says.
5G networks are designed for both high-bandwidth applications and ultra-low latency, or services that require near-instantaneous responses. That could prove especially useful in the testing of autonomous vehicles.
“When we start to experience 5G as a community, the things we’re going to experience are far different than what we’re used to” on mobile devices, Bryan Fries, vice president of advanced and emerging tech for T-Mobile, tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This is about creating connections and experiences that couldn’t exist before.”
As Government Technology reports, the experimentation might cover vehicle-to-vehicle, and vehicle-to-building use cases, as well as entertainment. “Pretty much anything you can imagine, there’s somebody out there working on it,” Plattenburg tells Government Technology. “And we think this initiative will identify a lot more early stage companies who aren’t on our radar today, but we think we’ll basically be able to discover them, and help to dramatically accelerate their growth.”
DIVE DEEPER: Find out more about the smart city ambitions of Peachtree Corners, Ga.
