Smart Cities, Smart homes, * Reality, UDH

Dispatch from CES 2017

MOBI News
2017-01-06 (last updated 2017-04-26)
William McIver Jr., Ph.D.
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Mobile First Technology
Mobile First Technology Initiative
New Brunswick Community College
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The Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2017) runs January 5–8. This is the 50th anniversary of the massive trade show held every year in Las Vegas. CES includes exhibitors of products and services, panels, talks, and product launches.

A highly informative panel called “Cities of the Future" was held on Thursday, January 6th. Among the panelists were Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development for the Government of Canada. Minister Bains stressed Canada’s need to innovate in the smart city space given the country’s high urbanization. He also pointed to 5G as critical to such efforts, particularly for the enablement of solutions based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Minister Bains discussed ways in which the Government of Canada is attempting to create an environment for such innovations, including ongoing efforts to manage spectrum for 5G, support the development of incubators and accelerators around the country, and government-supported evaluation and validation of Canadian technologies.

Smart cities innovators from UPS, GE, and Ericsson filled out the Cities of the Future panel. They each cited highly innovative examples of public and private projects around the world that are leveraging IoT and other technologies to solve local and regional issues, including CO2 reduction, waste management, and multi-modal transportation.

Among the miniscule fraction of new technologies being presented at CES this year that I was able to survey in my first half day at CES 2017, the smart home; augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (*Reality); and ultra high definition television categories were prominent, with many practical and market ready solutions in each.
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Copyright 2016–2017 William McIver, Jr.





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