This week’s Smart City roundup features a partnership to connect the city lights of Paris, a partnership to build the largest proximity network in North America and a unified communications system gets an upgrade with cloud solution.

Silver Spring to connect the city lights of Paris

Silver Spring Networks, Inc. has once again been selected to lead a smart city initiative and this time it’s heading to Paris, France. Silver Spring has expanded its relationship with EVESA, the agency responsible for managing the street lights and traffic control systems in Paris, to deploy a citywide canopy of networks to connect above-ground and subterranean cabinet-based controllers for the city’s street and traffic lights. The project will cover popular and iconic neighborhoods such as the Louvre, Hotel-de-Ville, Palais-Bourbon, Elysee, the Bourse, and remaining arrondissements.

“With more than 2 million citizens and 16 million annual visitors, modernizing the public lighting infrastructure for ‘The City of Lights’ while preserving its world-renowned aesthetic is a crucial undertaking. We are excited to now complete the first phase of our project and extend our relationship with EVESA to deploy a smart city canopy network across Paris,” said Scott Lang, Chairman, President and CEO, Silver Spring Networks. “EVESA’s diligent planning and intense technology testing help ensure the citizens of Paris receive a globally proven, highly reliable, and secure smart city solution.”

Silver Spring was recently chosen by the Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol for its ‘Bristol is Open’ smart city program and was tasked to deploy its standards-based IPv6 wireless network across the city to connect a variety of sensors and ultimately creating a ‘living innovation lab.’

 .

A partnership for the largest proximity network in North America

Ad tech company Freckle IoT has partnered with mobile technology provider Blue Bite to deploy 60,000 beacons across the U.S. to create the largest proximity network and spearhead innovation in the mobile location-based services. This partnership will enable advertisers to launch integrated marketing campaigns that can connect with more consumers across multiple platforms such as mobile, digital and out-of-home environments. The partnership leverages Freckle IoT’s open beacon system by connecting it to Blue Bite’s extensive location partnerships and mTAG platform.

The beacons will be strategically placed such as in transit vehicles, street furniture like benches, airports, college campuses, movie theaters, bars and taxis. The beacons will enable apps carrying Freckle IoT’s SDK to provide rich content through mobile or wearable devices and target in-app advertising on a hyper-local level.

“With this partnership, we are embarking on the next era of mobile activation – which is based on the Internet of Things,” said Neil Sweeney, President & CEO of Freckle IoT. “As more people adopt connected devices, marketers have grown eager to engage consumers on the path-to-purchase using hyper-local strategies. The scale of this launch means we can provide brands with infinitely greater opportunities to engage their target audience than with what is possible under the boxed-in solutions available in the market.”

 .

NetFortris replaces existing cloud platform with GENBAND’s Smart Office solution

NetFortris, Inc., a provider of secure cloud solutions for voice and data networks, announced that it has replaced its existing cloud platform with GENBAND’s Smart Office solution. GENBAND will deliver secure unified communications capabilities which includes voice and video calling, multi-media conferencing, instant messaging and web collaboration across phones, desktops and mobility solutions to NetFortris’ business customers.

“Enterprises of all sizes want to take advantage of unified communications functionality to keep employees connected, collaborative and productive,” said Grant Evans, NetFortris Chief Executive Officer. “We evaluated several solutions across the technology landscape, and selected GENBAND because of its broad feature set and sophisticated licensing and deployment model. Additionally, GENBAND distinguished themselves with their ability to deliver the professional services we needed to accelerate time-to-market.”

photo credit: Torre Eiffel (Explore!) via photopin (license)