Cities are not only places in which to live, they are also engines of opportunity, employment and economic growth that currently generate more than 80 per cent of global GDP. But as the global population increases it is also becoming increasingly urbanised. Around 55 per cent of humanity currently lives in urban areas, but that figure is predicted to rise to 68 per cent by 2050. 

If our cities are to meet the challenge of rapid population growth, and the associated issues of climate change, migration and resource management, they will need not only to work harder than ever before, but also to be smarter.

As city governments and leaders plan for the future, many are turning to cellular technology such as 5G mmWave to create ‘smart cities’ that harness the power of connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT), automation and artificial intelligence (AI) not just to deliver essential services and infrastructure, but also to increase their competitiveness and appeal to investors, business and potential residents alike. 

This is especially the case in Asia, where much of the next wave of population growth and urbanisation is expected and where city governments have learned profound lessons from the impact of the pandemic. 

As one of the most dynamic countries in South-east Asia, it’s not surprising that Vietnam has recognised the power and importance of innovation as an economic force. As part of its National Digital Transformation Programme and wider plans for economic growth and sustainable development, the Vietnamese government is implementing long-term strategies to develop and promote science, technology and innovation across the country. It has also committed to maximising competitiveness by attracting investment and research and development, particularly across its burgeoning information and communications technology (ICT) sector. 

Signalling the scale of its ambition, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) announced in February this year that it had set up a steering committee for the development of 6G technology.

As Vietnam embraces mobile technology, aiming for 100 per cent smartphone ownership among adults by the end of 2022, the country is looking at how best to supply the infrastructure and bandwidth to enable the rollout of 5G mobile connectivity, modelling its approach on an mmWave smart-city experiment in Hanoi.

5G mmWave has already been deployed in the US, Japan, South Korea and several other countries. It has been used to offer much faster data speeds by increasing the bandwidth that’s available in a specific part of the radio frequency spectrum – between 24GHz and 42GHz – which was previously unused. Defined by its very short wavelength, 5G mmWave can transfer data at far higher speeds than are currently available, although its transfer distances are shorter than those offered by lower frequencies.

This makes 5G mmWave ideal for increasing speeds and data bandwidth in densely populated places, such as campuses, stadia, airports or factories, where data congestion can cause networks operating on lower frequencies to struggle. This has profound implications for the solutions that will support smart cities such as autonomous vehicles, smart navigation and public transport, as well as consumer applications.

Exploring such possibilities is the mission of an innovative experiment that has been described as Vietnam’s ‘first smart city’: the Phenikaa University Smart Mini-City Campus project in Hanoi. The project is the product of a landmark agreement signed in January 2022 by three partners: the Phenikaa-X Joint Stock Company, established in 2020 with the goal of becoming Vietnam’s leading company in the field of autonomous vehicles and industrial robots; the state-owned Viettel Networks, Vietnam’s largest telecommunications service provider; and Qualcomm, the international wireless-technology company and 5G mmWave pioneer. 

By transforming the whole of the Phenikaa University campus into a test bed for smart city technologies, the project will act as a pilot for the development, testing and rollout of smart solutions nationwide such as digital maps, autonomous vehicles, intelligent robots and drones.

“We have been developing solutions for remote learning, the PHX Smart School, a school bus system, a system we call Smart Care, which automatically detects people when they enter the university campus, and last-mile delivery using robots and autonomous vehicles,” explains Le Anh Son, the Chief Executive Officer at Phenikaa-X, a hybrid organisation that combines the staff, students and facilities of a university engineering department with the commercial interests and ambitions of a start-up.

“5G mmWave offers high bandwidths that allow us to operate at speeds with very low latency, which we need when we are developing solutions for drones, robots and autonomous vehicles,” Le Anh Son explains. “They all require real-time monitoring, remote low-latency control and real-time processing by artificial intelligence with very high degrees of accuracy, and we couldn’t achieve this without the network capacity offered by 5G mmWave.”

Beyond the Phenikaa University Campus, 5G mmWave is supporting a number of Hanoi smart-city initiatives with 15 hotspots in commercial shops and residential buildings, and 500 more to come across industrial, sports and academic facilities. The intention is to duplicate its successes in cities across Vietnam.

Back on campus, Phenikaa students can take advantage of smart classrooms connected by 5G mmWave-enabled fixed wireless access – high-speed internet access delivered by radio signals rather than wires – to ensure seamless internet connectivity for in-person and remote teaching. The model is designed to ensure that pupils in more remote areas don’t miss out on an interactive learning environment. 

“5G mmWave enables lots of solutions, especially post-Covid,” says Le Anh Son. “With our PHX Smart School, pupils can learn remotely with no disadvantage. The speed and low latency of 5G mmWave means that there are no delays and no disadvantages, so working and learning in the future can be very flexible.”

If the connectivity facilitated by 5G mmWave is already proving key to the delivery of smart solutions in urban environments, it also looks set to become a key driver of digital transformation, opportunity and growth, especially in key ICT areas such as AI, IoT, connected devices, broadband wireless, edge computing and big data analytics. According to a recent report, by 2027, the market for 5G narrow-band, mid-band and mmWave in smart cities will reach US$121.5bn, while the global smart cities market is predicted to exceed US$2.7tn and the artificial intelligence market in smart cities will reach US$298bn. 

No matter how fast the transformation, however, the evolution of smart cities will require an iterative approach in which, as Phenikaa X’s experiments show, technological and urban ecosystems will have to be developed to allow smart solutions to be efficiently accepted and operated.