“The Smart City Committee in the Fiberconnect Council MENA has a mission to promote the deployment of ultra-high-speed FTTX. This technology is considered the most sustainable access network and is vital in reducing the carbon footprint. Additionally, it serves as the core of cities’ digital transformation. The committee aims to support urban development by providing guidelines, standards, and services that highlight deployment approaches, applications, and benefits for Smart Cities, campuses, and other real estate developments in the MENA region.
This month, we will cover the deployment of electric hydrofoil ships in NEOM -Saudi Arabia, the digitization of public transport payments in Ajman – UAE, Urban planning using AI in Bahrain, and multiple use cases in the USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, as well as Vietnam and South Korea. These use cases were in Hotspot Wi-Fi, Air Taxis, Autonomous public transport, micromobility, and decarbonization. Other use cases cover the expansion of digital infrastructure using fiber optics or 5G small cells and the use of drones for delivery and many others…
Finally, it’s important to emphasize the role of optical fiber in supporting the upcoming deployments of smart city infrastructure networks globally. Optical fiber provides the required ultra-wide bandwidth for the massive number of IoT devices embedded in these networks.
Regards,
Committee Chair
Dr. Houssam Al Masri
Smart Cities Ops and Apps May 2026 Newsletter
As Chair of the Smart City Committee, I am pleased to share an important insight from our May 2026 newsletter: fiber technology is no longer only a telecom layer — it is becoming the enabling nervous system of smart cities. Across the newsletter, we highlighted several leading smart city use cases: adaptive ramp metering in […]
Smart Cities Ops and Apps April 2026 Newsletter
What strikes me most about the April 2026 Smart City Committee Newsletter is not any single development, but rather the consistency of the signal across all of them. Whether the topic is AI-driven governance, urban air mobility, autonomous public transport, or large-scale IoT deployment, the same infrastructure requirement sits underneath: resilient, low-latency, high-capacity fiber […]
Smart Cities Ops and Apps February 2026 Newsletter
Fiber: The Digital Backbone of Smart Cities The latest Smart City Committee Newsletter – February 2026 from the Fiber Connect Council MENA highlights several inspiring initiatives shaping the future of urban innovation—from electric mobility and AI-enabled city services to unified command centers and smart utilities. While these technologies often capture the spotlight, their success depends […]
