SoftBank and Dublin City Council announce landmark partnership to help shape global smart city deployments in Dublin

June 26, 2018, SoftBank Corp., Dublin City Council

SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”) and Dublin City Council announced today that SoftBank will join Dublin City Council's Smart City programme and its Smart Docklands District testbed. Both parties will exchange information and knowledge about Smart City solutions, explore potential trials, proofs of concepts and find best use cases for the future smart city.

Both parties are committed to building a “Proof of Concept” (PoC) programme of activity and will collaborate across Dublin's world leading tech ecosystem to trial a number of smart city solutions. SoftBank will pilot their Global IoT (Internet of Things) Platform in Dublin. The partnership aims to deliver real impact with an emphasis on solutions ‘designed to scale’ and easily transferable to other cities.

The partnership will enable SoftBank to work alongside industry, academia and entrepreneurs to jointly solve city challenges, improve service delivery while also delivering positive outcomes for the city and its citizens.

Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council stated that “Dublin City Council is delighted to welcome SoftBank to join our smart city programme. This partnership will help position Dublin at the forefront of smart city innovation and to turn the opportunity of smart city technologies into a reality. We are committed to building a programme of activity through “Smart Dublin” and to concentrate pilots across our Smart Docklands testbed district which is emerging as a world class smart technology testbed.”

“We look forward to collaborating with Dublin City Council to share our rich experience in smart city development in Japan and to also leverage our global IoT platform. SoftBank strongly believes it can contribute to Dublin's development and future growth building out local solutions that can scale globally,” said Junichi Miyakawa, Representative Director & CTO of SoftBank Corp.

Dublin is Ireland's Capital City and home to over 1.3 million residents. Dublin City Council, through the Smart Dublin initiative, has an ambition to be at the forefront of global smart city technology innovation.

‘Smart Docklands’ is Dublin City Council's smart city testbed and has unique potential as a Smart City District. There is a high concentration of new buildings and investment as well as a wide range of connectivity and ‘smart’ connectivity assets. It is also home to many of the world's leading global technology companies. Smart Docklands is the result of a collaboration between Dublin City Council and the SFI CONNECT Centre based in Trinity College, Dublin. CONNECT is Ireland's Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications. www.smartdocklands.ie