Growing Digital Jurisdiction Jersey A Founding member of Global Industry Group to Develop Standards for Smart Cities

The Island of Jersey, best-known to date as an international finance centre, has joined the team that will produce the technology roadmap for evolving Smart Cities globally. Jersey has been quietly making headway as a location of choice for organisations looking for the ideal technology testbed environment for new products and services, ever since the Island committed to rolling out fibre to every business and home.

As a founding member of the ETSI Industry Specification Group on City Digital Profile, Digital Jersey, the organisation responsible for the Island’s digital strategy, will be working to develop and test the standards, which will help cities and regions obtain the most suitable technology options to improve public sector efficiency and quality of life for their citizens. This Smart Cities group aims to ensure that new technology invested in by countries and cities adheres to open standards, interoperable with other locations. The goal is for good investment decisions to be made and proprietary options avoided.

Tony Moretta, CEO of Digital Jersey commented:

“This is a great opportunity for Jersey to use our world leading telecoms infrastructure and ideal demographic profile to test new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions that can then be launched around the world. If countries and cities are going to benefit from this work, then open interoperable standards are essential - when investment and best practice is shared, and technologies are developed and tested in one location, we are able to roll new technology out more quickly.”

The other founder members of the Smart Cities group include: Cisco, BT, Microsoft, IBM, Huawei and Digital Greenwich – the only other ‘location’ involved besides Jersey. The inaugural meeting of the group is set for 21st November and Digital Jersey will be working with its member telecom companies to fulfil its role.