No regulation of IT solutions a risk for smart cities, says Trai

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday said lack of regulation and standards for information and communications technology (ICT) solutions pose a risk for smart cities as they prevent data sharing, integration of devices and applications, and increase cost.

While studying ICT infrastructure in smart cities, the telecom regulator observed that such cities plan and deploy technology solutions their own way, without any common framework to implement a technology. Trai said non-standardised proprietary devices and solutions have come up in the market in absence of any regulation or standards.

“Such proprietary or non-standardised solutions have been created in silos and pose problems of inter-operability and prevent sharing of data amongst divergent applications,” Trai said in a white paper on ‘smart cities in India: framework for ICT infrastructure’.