International Smart Cities Conference Held in Ankara

Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Ahmet Arslan stated that although they are in cooperation with smart city applications, which will make municipal services much easier, more efficient and more economical, some municipalities have been making a difficult attitude in the places where infrastructure services are provided, saying, “By making the necessary arrangements in the legislation with the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization. We will force the municipalities to comply with the legislation. ” said.

At the opening of the International Smart Cities Conference organized by the Public Technology Platform (KTP) at ATO Congresium, Arslan said that the dizzying development of technology has led to changes in all areas of life.

Explaining that the world population is growing rapidly and a great migration wave has started from rural areas to cities with the transition from the agricultural economy to the industrial economy, Arslan said, “This wave has gained a great momentum with the development of the services economy, and the needs and problems arising in areas such as transportation, energy, health and industry due to urbanization. As a result of providing solutions with information and communication technologies, it has developed the concept of 'smart city'. ” he spoke.

Arslan stated that the concept of smart cities can be defined as "Increasing the quality of life by considering the needs of people who live in cities and developing and changing technologies, and planning the life accordingly."

Arslan stated that the most efficient use of limited resources would be made by transforming the main service infrastructures and systems into smart systems with new technologies to solve the problems created by urbanization.

“Broadband internet infrastructure is needed to offer many services to citizens in smart cities. We are working on increasing broadband internet access. We have increased the fiber line length from 14 thousand kilometers to 80 thousand kilometers in the last 300 years. We increased the service quality by providing 2009G service in the mobile network since 3, and to 2016G level since April 4,5. The number of subscribers benefiting from 4,5G services exceeded 1 million in 52 year. We know that more than a third of this is that their devices are appropriately active users. We increased over 75 million in the number of mobile subscribers. Mobile subscriber density exceeded 94 percent. The number of machine-to-machine communication (M2M) subscribers has also reached 4 million. Turkey communications and information technologies in the world, was one of the fastest growing countries, but provide access to fiber broadband and mobile infrastructures, we all know that we should also establish a faster, taking into account future needs. "

Arslan, fiber infrastructure and base station to draw attention to the problems experienced in the work, to do this, they are doing legislative studies and proposals shared with the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning told.

“We aimed to expand broadband access to every corner of the country”

Underlining that they have carried out pilot applications on the smart city, Arslan said that they implemented one of them in Kars on 30 March.

Reminding that many smart systems have been installed in Kars, from wireless internet to lighting, from intersections to BuluTT Eye Safety, Arslan stated that they care to spread these applications to all provinces rapidly.

Arslan, they are aiming to deliver broadband access to every corner of the country, said that they intend to publish in the coming months, creating a framework of Turkey's National Broadband Strategy.

With the strategy document, the country's future-oriented needs will be identified and the actions to meet them will be expressed voicing Arslan, meeting the needs of the citizens in cities and smart urbanism, the foundation of the foundation of fiber and base station infrastructure is laid quickly, he said.

Arslan, according to the regulations in Turkey would take place with the ingenuity of the operators specifying the establishment of electronic communications infrastructure, he said:

“We give authorizations and licenses to the operators in this framework. Operators face some difficulties in some municipalities when they try to take this infrastructure. We know that smart city applications are possible in cooperation with municipalities. If only all municipalities approached with this logic. Although we are in cooperation with smart city applications that will make municipal services much easier, more efficient and more economical, some municipalities, unfortunately, do not comply with the compulsory and difficult attitudes instead of facilitating the applications without being aware of their future contribution. In this regard, we will compel the municipalities to comply with the legislation by making the necessary arrangements in the legislation with the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization. If they do not help us in this practice that will contribute to our people, we will make arrangements for them. ”

“If we learn from the experiences, we will get successful results”

Explaining that they have been working intensively in the field of smart transportation systems since 2012, Arslan stated that the strategy for the development and improvement of the transportation component of smart cities has been determined in the National Intelligent Transportation Systems Strategy Document and Oct 2014-2016 Action Plan.

Arslan, to achieve the 2023 targets expressed as they prepare a new action plan, to shed light on the future of Turkey's Action Plan 2018-2020 was reported to be a strategy document and the action plan.

Underlining that there will be more developments in this field with the citizen-focused, human-centered, environmentally-conscious policies and activities that will be carried out by the institutions and organizations, Arslan said that if lessons learned from the experiences of others, more successful and productive results will be obtained.

Turk Telekom, share the conference innovative smart city applications with participants, introducing Turkey, Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister Ahmet Arslan and Turkish Telecom Technology Deputy General Manager Cengiz Dogan, as well as municipalities, public institutions such as the governor, relevant civil society organizations and It was realized with the participation of nearly a thousand people consisting of development agencies.