The announcement campaign “Moving Toward the Future: A Smart Cultural Capital” was held on Aug. 31st. Mayor Lai addressed that the credit belongs to the “Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs” and FarEasTone for supporting Tainan’s smart city transition. Through numerous hours spent on meetings to apply for the project, Tainan City Government’s proposal was finally accepted by the evaluation committee of the Industrial Development Bureau, and had received a NTD 1 billion financial support.
The mayor further noted that the 4G smart city initiation had not only resolved the many issues Tainan encountered, but also provided citizens with enhanced public services. All information gathered or utilized by Tainan City Government will be open to the public. Consequently, the city government encourages citizens to improve living quality and maximize synergy by utilizing the information.
The CEO of FarEasTone, Yvonne Li, explained that the 4G smart city initiation is a comprehensive project that injects information technology into the antique city. The project has accomplished many spectacular achievements. For instance, Tainan was nominated by GSMA as a paradigm smart city. After two years of hard work, both Tainan City Government and FarEasTone had accomplished the dream of making Tainan a globally known city. Upon completing the goal, the next step Tainan City Government hopes to achieve is to fundamentally improve the living quality in Tainan with user-friendly smart applications.
The Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission remarked that the smart city initiation aims to satisfy the needs of citizens, and to build a city that is rich in culture and technology. Many records were made over the past few years; some are listed as the following:
- The first 4G smart city in Taiwan
- The first city in Taiwan to cooperate with Qualcomm to promote “Wireless Reach”
- The only city in Taiwan to be nominated by “2017 Glomo Awards - Best Use of Mobile for Smart Cities”
- The first city government in Taiwan to be invited to share smart city initiation experiences at MWC in Shanghai
- The first city in Taiwan to be filmed by GSMA as a smart city propaganda
- FarEasTone is the only mobile carrier in Asia to be invited to demonstrate smart city applications in Barcelona
The superior achievements of the 6 flagship projects FarEasTone and Tainan City Government had accomplished are as the following:
1.Smart city operation center:
Tainan City Government has established its first 4G smart city operation center and has installed 20 thousand beacons to provide location services that facilitates Apps (i.e. Tainan Spot, Tainan Public Service Helper, Tainan City Bus), which would allow access to public government information and enhance the quality of public services. It is also worth noting that the beacon service is popular, and has reached a total of 240 million usages.
2.Water resource monitoring:
Tainan City Government provides citizens with real-time information on water conditions to prevent tragedy from happening. In addition, the city government has also established the following hardware devices:
- 4G monitoring devices that survey the 11 major waterways within the city
- 48 pumping stations
- 4G water resource management information backup system
3.Public Transportation:
The system of Tainan City Bus has been upgraded to 4G communication. With beacons installed at nearly 4,000 different locations, Tainan City Bus is able to provide a variety of local real-time information, and further combined public transportation traveling with local delicacies (1.85 million usages). The following are other infrastructures and hardware devices upgraded or installed to provide advanced traffic management:
- 400 buses are upgraded and up to the international TTIA 4G bus standards, among which, 120 are equipped with real-time image recordings on traffic conditions
- Free Wifi provided on buses and at bus stations
- 900 smart LED bus stops has been installed
4.Education:
Tainan City Government has successfully launched the “CloudPlay Mobile Learning Platform” it had co-developed with 11 schools. The education platform delivers more than 900 courses and 271 4G AP that could be accessed as Wifi hot spots by elementary schools and middle schools during field trips. The newly established cloud-based education platform is utilized by over 500 thousand teachers and students.
5.Health:
The city government has established 335 community health centers that could be accessed through “Smart Health” 4G monitoring devices. In addition to hardware systems and devices, Tainan City Government has also aligned 41 clinics, 3 regional hospitals, and a public health center to provide an integrated database service on blood pressure/sugar examinations, which is also Tainan’s outpost in providing comprehensive long-term care. Currently, the health service has received 29 thousand applications, and has served over 180 thousand citizens.
6.Tourism:
“AlleyTainan” is a location-based mobile commerce platform that runs on the beacons to provide information on local stores and cuisine. According to estimation, the App has created revenue of NTD 300 million since 2016, and has a usage count of 4 million so far.
