How 5G will unlock the industrial Internet, driving mobile connectivity

When 5G mobile services start to roll out worldwide from next year, smart cities such as Hangzhou are expected to get smarter.

In Hangzhou, capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang province and one of the country’s major technology hubs, evidence of the city’s smart infrastructure can be gleaned from how its public services function. Police officers are notified of major car accidents soon after they happen, traffic lights automatically adjust to changes in the volume of vehicles on the road, and in emergencies, fire trucks and ambulances are not stopped by a single red light until they arrive at the scene.

Those advances are enabled by Hangzhou’s City Brain project, a Cloud computing and artificial intelligence-driven urban traffic-management system. It covers a total area of 420 sq km  – that’s seven times the size of New York’s Manhattan island.