Dominique Stump
The Transportation Department has added AT&T as a strategic partner in the Smart City Challenge, a competition that seeks to develop an integrated city centered around data, technology and creativity.
AT&T will provide the winning city roughly $1 million worth of hardware, products and services such as connectivity, IoT security consulting and  big data analytics support for traffic modeling and forecasting, USDOT said Thursday.
The department added that the winner has the option to let AT&T host a “hackathon” for developers or host a DevLab to provide application development and coding training to city IT employees and other stakeholders.
USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said the technologies offered by the partners of the challenge can drive the cities’ efforts to update their transportation systems.
“We recognize that each of the contest finalists has a unique vision for how they want to transform their city’s transportation network, which is why we’ll be working with the winner to help them select the services and solutions they need AT&T to provide so they can build the smart city of their dreams,” said Mike Zeto, AT&T Smart Cities general manager and executive director.
USDOT launched the Smart City Challenge in December and is now at the final leg of the challenge with Portland, Kansas City, Columbus, San Francisco, Denver, Austin and Pittsburgh as finalists.
