How Smart Cities and 5G will improve health, public safety and transportation

We're back at CES 2019 coming to you live from the CNET stage. I'm Jason Hiner with TechRepublic. And next to me is Teena Maddox, senior writer with TechRepublic. We have a great guest to discuss the future of cities, Mike Zeto of AT&T. Mike, welcome Thanks for having us. We appreciate it. Pleasure, well, Mike, why don't you talk a little bit about what you do at AT&T. Yeah, so I got a great job, and at AT&T, I'm the general manager of our smart cities business. I actually founded the business for the company. It was a startup inside of the Internet of things practice that we have. And I've got responsibility for not only smart cities but drones. IoT devices for Fastnet, which is our nationwide public safety broadband network, and then I've got our public-private partnerships. And some other emerging areas of the business around connecting to stadiums, and connecting to spaces and event venues. So it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of emerging areas that people like to talk about And we feel like we're doing a lot good for, not only businesses that are our customers and the cities, but for the citizens that we serve. So it's a great gig man, I love it. Nice. Mike I wanted to ask you about if you could tell us a little bit about some of the IOT projects that AT&T is working on with Smart Cities? Yeah absolutely. So, you know from series perspective we've been active for the Last three years with smart city solution and we are basically taking internet things solution That we've developed in partnership with our ecosystem and then deploying them into cities like Atlanta where we've got 18 [UNKNOWN] digital infrastructure that's deployed and its an IOT censor note. With multiple cameras, environmental sensors and audio sensors. And then a suite of applications that allow you to use those sensors to provide data back and make decisions for the citizens. Public safety's a big use there. So that sensor can detect gunshots, and then leverage the shot's fodder/u application I'll be able to provide unreported gunshot information to the PD in Atlanta, it provides for energy efficiency, it provides for the ability to gather data that you can use to decrease road fatalities, and improve mobility through those cameras, again as well as public safety, so a lot of various Different solutions that we've got deployed in cities. Atlanta's a great use case in partnership with Georgia Power, as I just said. And Portland we're doing the same thing, same AT&T digital infrastructure solution to solve for vision zero, right? Which is an awesome cause, right? And Las Vegas we've just announced this week. Something that we are doing right here in Las Vegas, right in Old Town, if you will. Right in the innovation district with Michael Sherwood the CIO. We deployed a lighting control device that's connected with LTM, not everything has to be 5G, contrary to what everyone is talking about this week. With LTM and then Associating after market air quality sensors. So you're getting lighting controls which draws efficiencies right, for the city. It creates a safer environment because you know that those lights are always lit, and if they're not you can get out there quick and fix them. And then you have the ability to plug in after market sensors Which is great, because then you can take that particular data and other things that you're gonna gather from that air quality sensor. And really understand based on time of day, the amount of traffic, construction going on, what those air quality levels are like at a micro level. Which is important to those citizens that live around that. Very cool. So one of the things that a lot of people don't know, the biggest new pavilion at CS this year is on resiliency, over just north of north hall in the west gate. And Tina, tomorrow you're moderating in a smart city's panel. Mm-hm, yes. Over there, and The great thing about that is it really reflects the fact that a lot of people, here at CES, the organizer of CES, you know, they're more concerned about, sort of, the state of the world, and the direction of humanity. And they wanted to do something that not only was about gadgets and all the things we're used to do at CES But also touched on the ways technology is improving people's lives, the way it's changing the direction of society, and so that resiliency panel's dealing with a lot of things. Sea level rise in Miami, using technology to help deal with that. The board of CTA who runs CES, they even experienced this firsthand while they were planning for This event, that they were surrounded by wildfires at one of their board meetings in northern California. So what we're seeing is technology trying to deal with many of the problems that are happening in the world, and using technology to save life and property. So, Dean I'm going to put you on the spot for a second, and say you know, you've covered a lot of things like shot splatter and others, public safety like Mike talked about. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the cases that we've seen and that you've reported on about shot splatter and some of the places that are doing You know things are that maybe tell the audience if they're not familiar with shotspotter what that is? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah shotspotter. It's a sensor that goes onto smart lighting fixtures and many cases such as with AT&T or other manufacturers and it. Detects when gun shots have occurred. And so it helps the police triangulate where the shots have come from. And if there's multiple gun shots in any given time, they can send out police cars. Somebody doesn't have to call 911. They can send someone out to see what happened, because in a normal city, you don't have a random gun shot. So. If someone calls 911 and hear a shot, it will take up to five minutes typically for a car to get there. But now some of these, they're not [UNKNOWN] spotter, even that might get there faster. MAN: But now they're doing something else with some of the cities, with drones too, right? Why don't you talk a little bit about that? WOMAN: Right, well the whole concept of being able to have drones monitoring and sending the police out faster is fantastic, I know. But you also have to get into the whole privacy issues with citizens. But public safety is so important, it's- You know worst that try off in order to you know what's going on to have your citizens protected and for me that's when I read about smart cities that's what keeps coming over and over just what it makes a smart city makes citizens life easier and so all the great technology that the AT has that's you know going all around us it's just you know we are not gonna recognized cities of the future you know it's the world become more urban. I think what you said about About public safety, right. And you're talking about drones, and you're talking about shots [UNKNOWN] and unreported gunshots. It's really not about Big Brother at the end of the day, right. This is about emergency preparedness for first responders. it's about gathering data ahead of time after an incident, so that people can be prepared when they get to the scene, right. So it not only helps to improve the chances of Decreasing property loss. And savings lives of the citizens. But also protecting those first responders. I mean, they have a dangerous job. So the more information that you can get so that they can be prepared when they arrive on the, at the scene, the better off that they're gonna be. As well as allow them to protect you. And you know, one of the things that we've done is we've went out and 5G is 100% fundamentally going to drive the modernization of cities. I mean there is no doubt about it, right? And the other thing that we've done from a network investment prospective as we're rolling out 5G is put a stake in the ground working with federal government and First Net. And that nation, and nationwide LT broadband network for first responders, where they have priotization and premption. Right, and that's a major investment that we're making. We've got four thousand plus agencies that have signed up in a year, hundreds of thousands of users, and so we continue to do more and more, not only from a solution perspective and things that can ride on top of the network- And add value to the citizens and the cities that we serve, but also from a network perspective as well, so. So Mike, since you're from AT&T, of course, and 5G is probably one of the biggest themes at the show. Is it? [LAUGH] [LAUGH] We have to, and of course, 2019 is now the year of 5G, everybody's saying. We have to ask you, you know, when we went from 3G to 4G, it was like a 5X to 10X jump. And it unlocked applications that we just hadn't thought of yet, that nobody had conceptualized yet. Uber, Air BNB, things that real time applications, where you needed that real time response With the leap forward, the 5G is a bigger leap. We're talking maybe 10x to potentially even 100x in some cases. When it comes to smart cities, could 5G be what unlocks, there has been some sort of uneven progress with smart cities. Could 5G unlock sort some of the features and what is kind of next? What do you guys see as sort of some of the most exciting possibilities for small cities and for some of these applications that 5G is gonna enable us to potentially realise? Yeah, it all [UNKNOWN] right? From a 5G perspective there are a few cities cases that I think 5G will unlock and be fundamental in changing. Video analytics is one. So again, that low latency, that high data throughput that you need, that improved coverage, that processing at the edge, combining AI with that and the machine learning, and doing it all at the device level and then Across the network. Those are the kind of things the 5G will enable. So video analytics is gonna be huge. And that could be used to either automate intelligent traffic systems where you really can't have latency. It could be used for a first responder use case that 5G will further enable like a connected ambulance. So imagine an ambulance, through a telematics solution, being able to trigger the lights in real time to control an intersection, to move through it quicker to an event. And then as they're responding back with the person or persons that have been involved in it, have live video. -from the trauma center that they're transporting that person to, to help in the actual ambulance. But also, from a preparedness perspective, making sure that when that patient arrives, that you have the right folks there and the right team to save that person's life. And that's all enabled through- Video through low latency. I mean, that's 5G. That's what it's all about, right? I mean, and again, that's a very powerful use case. And then you've got your consumer use cases as well. I mean, download a video in six seconds instead of six minutes and you hear it, right? So I think that's all great stuff, but the one thing we shouldn't forget is that this is really all about equality as well, right? So we've got to make sure that, from a digital inclusion perspective, When we're talking to cities that, we're not just deploying 5G in the nicest neighborhoods, we're deploying 5G across all of the neighborhoods, right. And the connectivity's only as good as the devices the people have, right? And many people have devices You know, in low income neighbor hoods, but they don't have the connectivity. And so that's one of the things we can start to bring to them, you know as the devices get rolled out and it's gonna be a journey, right, at the end of the day. But we've got 5G deployed in 12 cities, as of December of 18. We've got seven more cities, they're gonna be deployed in 19 as I said. You know, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, and right here in Las Vegas are some of them. So we're making progress and then with 5G evolution and everything else that's happening, we're well on our way to getting this network deployed and upgraded and there's a lot more data being pushed through the network from 3G to 4G to 5G. If you think of the incremental jump in data flown out Right, I mean, it's an entirely different game. That's awesome, so as we kinda wrap it up, let's take that idea you're talking about with transportation. Because one of the most interesting things that's happened at CES That actually has some relation to 5G as well. On Monday at the Qualcomm press conference, Ford came on and said that they were going to deploy Qualcomm's, Vehicle to Everything technology. Right across their entire fleet in 2022. There are 30,000 to 40,000 auto accident deaths in the US every year there are obviously a lot more a larger magnitude than that worldwide approaching a million. Things like vehicle to everything, which will be also enabled by 5G more nodes because of more nodes on the network, where your car can not only maybe be self driving eventually. But before that even, your car. Could have communication with other cars and with the roads and with the buildings. And so if you're going down a road and somebody's about to run a red light, the sensors could tell from the road, and the building, and the car could tell your car to stop because otherwise you're about to get hit in the side impact collision which are The most fatal accident. So I wanna do all that to plug. Tina, tomorrow, you have another panel for people that care about this topic. Why don't you mention that, where that is, and what people can find? Absolutely. Tomorrow over at West Gate, I'm gonna be doing a CES panel on smart cities. Flirting with blockchain, and just some of the benefits that being transparent with blockchain has for cities, and how it can engage citizens better. So, and that's tomorrow, and honestly, it's in the morning. [LAUGH] So it's gonna be a great panel though. I believe it's at 10:30. 10:30. Very good. All right. Well We're gonna take a quick break. I wanna thank Mike- Thanks, [UNKNOWN] From AT&T for being here, a pleasure. We're gonna take a break, again, but stay tuned. When we come back, Ashley [UNKNOWN] is here with the streaming economy.