Telecom Italia is Expo 2015’s key technology partner. Under the terms of the partnership agreement, which is worth €43 million in funding, goods and services, Telecom Italia will support the development of a sustainable and intelligent city – the first Smart City of the future – of which the site will serve as an example. Telecom Italia is to supply Expo 2015 with fixed-line, mobile and IT network infrastructure, supply the latest generation of technology solutions, manage operations and maintenance, and supply telephony and data connectivity and traffic services.
As part of its plan to build the Expo 2015 Digital Smart City as a template for the city of the future, Expo 2015 adjudged Telecom Italia’s technical bid to fully meet its innovation and environmental sustainability requirements and comply with international technology standards. The Expo 2015 Digital Smart City will empower visitors to become food-aware citizens, combining groundbreaking technological services with environmental sustainability as a template for our future cities.
Telecom Italia is the first company that Expo 2015 has chosen as a “Global Service Partner”. As the only connectivity and integrated services company to be assigned this role, Telecom Italia benefits from exclusivity in its market category and earns worldwide exposure. Telecom Italia will have a dedicated commercial space at the Expo site and be able to develop and roll out new sales offerings associated with the event, as well as exploit rights to use Expo 2015’s logo and official images, and leverage opportunities for visibility in the Expo area, on its website and in media campaigns.
Specifically, Telecom Italia will provide fixed and mobile networks and data access infrastructure using the most advanced available technologies such as XG-PON for fibre-optic networks and LTE for next generation ultra-broadband mobile networks. The company will also leverage its Data Centers to provide cutting-edge ICT solutions, based, among other things, on Cloud Computing, and delivered via Wi-Fi, ZigBee, NFC (Near Field Communication), RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and PLC (Power Line Communication).
Headline features of the partnership include developing and supplying a broad range of the latest generation of services to transform the Expo site into a digitization- and environmental sustainability-led Smart City.
Telecom Italia will implement leading-edge Smart Services based on PLC technology to link up the lighting and telecommunications networks and make it possible to remotely manage public lighting installations, provide power and environmental monitoring, and supply additional advanced services such as digital signage and, within buildings, management of power consumption and alarm systems, automation and multimedia communications.
The Expo 2015 Digital Smart City’s infrastructure will also be deployed with NFC technology-equipped technologies (such as totems, turnstiles or POS) for interacting with visitors’ and exhibitors’ mobile terminals and delivering advanced mobile payment and mobile ticketing services. Telecom Italia will enable the activation of different types of services by installing specific applications onto SMART NFC SIMs in real time as and when they are used.
Planned public services in which Telecom Italia will be involved include building a web portal accessible from fixed phones, mobile phones and multimedia totems to allow the purchase of electronic entrance tickets online, virtual tour access, visit planning, participation in social initiatives, and purchasing event-related products online.
To ensure the widest possible access to the event, Telecom Italia will deploy telemedicine services for monitoring specific physiological parameters on the move, inclusive of data transmission to relevant healthcare professionals. Telecom Italia will also make tele-learning and entertainment platforms available in order to allow people to participate in Expo 2015 from hospitals, schools and old people’s homes via interactive whiteboards, bedside terminals and multimedia totems.
To optimize Expo 2015’s activities and operating process management, Telecom Italia will supply advanced application services for document management, virtual desktops, PC and mobile terminal management and configuration, and virtual hosting via its proprietary Nuvola Italiana Cloud Computing platform.
Telecom Italia Managing Director and COO Marco Patuano declared: “We are very proud to have been chosen by Expo 2015 as a technology partner. The Digital Smart City we are building for this extremely high-profile event will be a template for the city of the future – a future that is just around the corner – and be capable of ensuring high standards of digital services to support the Expo and its visitors, who will ‘experience’ the Expo’s theme of Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life in an absolutely ground-breaking way. We already have the technology to transform our cities into advanced organisms that are more energy efficient; technology that is capable of truly simplifying and improving people’s lives, and of optimizing the whole gamut of enterprise and institutional activities.”
Giuseppe Sala, CEO of Expo 2015 S.p.A., highlighted the following: “Our partnership with Telecom Italia is a significant step forwards in building the Universal Exposition, an event that offers an innovative technological approach to resolving third millennium food issues. We concluded this agreement just a few days after we began our campaign to source partners. Partnering with a major corporation like Telecom Italia shows that Expo 2015 is perceived as a major growth opportunity for Italy, and encourages us to continue along our path to 2015.”
Milan, 28 September 2011
