China Unicom launches ‘Smart City’ strategy

China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd announced its "Smart City" strategy on Tuesday, which aims to provide mobile applications and services to facilitate people's lives, as well as the operations of companies and local governments in several Chinese cities.

China Unicom, the nation's second-largest telecom carrier, said it would promote the project by cooperating with local governments. The company will use its data collection and analysis capabilities to offer diversified applications to citizens, companies and local governments.

Lu Yimin, general manager of China Unicom, said at a Beijing news briefing on Tuesday that the company had signed agreements with 118 Chinese cities by August to implement the project.

"With our urban optical fiber, WCDMA 3G and WLAN networks, together with nine data processing centers and a unified national platform, we will push forward the development of the Smart City project," said Lu.

In the last four years, China Unicom has deployed 980,000 kilometers of optical cable in China and set up nine data processing centers in cities such as Hohhot, Langfang and Dongguan.

An expert committee on the project was announced on Tuesday at the same event. The committee comprises about 30 experts from different industries like urban planning, transportation, health and security protection.