Verizon brings 5G innovation hub to Florida smart community

Source: Smart Cities Dive Published: November 17th, 2020

Lake Nona welcomed its partnership with Verizon in a January announcement that highlighted its goals to ensure seamless connectivity across the "living lab community". "[W]hile the technology will take time to harness, we're excited to see all the ways it will spark advancements across Lake Nona," the announcement reads.

Toby Redshaw, senior vice president of enterprise innovation and 5G solutions at Verizon, expressed similar excitement in working with a community that prioritizes a work-live-play lifestyle that's "fused with technology and enabled by technology." Redshaw said in an interview that selecting Lake Nona for this innovation hub location was a "strategically important" decision due to the community's reputation as one of the nation's first planned "smart cities."

"The one thing I'll boast about Nona is they have conquered bureaucracy," Redshaw said. "The pace at which this stuff changes, the rate at which you can implement new things, is really, really important. They've figured out how to do things properly and safely, but with a decision cycle time that would blow your mind."

Lake Nona is the home of Beep, which doubled down on improving the operations of its autonomous shuttle fleet amid the pandemic. Beep CEO Joe Moye said in a June interview that the company is "starting to evolve from just being a service provider to being a technology integrator," which opens opportunities for collaboration with Verizon.

Aside from automotive opportunities, Lake Nona is home to a 650-acre "Medical City" — anchored by institutions including the University of Central Florida Health Science Campus and the VA Medical Center — that could greatly benefit from the high speeds and low-latency of 5G, Redshaw said. He noted that developing 5G use cases within this Medical City will allow Verizon to bring significant insights to the broader healthcare community.

Verizon is actively working to expand its 5G network capabilities in other major metropolitan hubs, most recently announcing Dallas and Miami as its newest "5G MEC (mobile edge computing) cities." The company partnered with AWS Wavelength to bring advanced developer opportunities to these and other cities such as Atlanta and New York, with plans to reach 10 cities by the end of the year.

The telecom's mission to expand access to 5G comes as misinformation sows some public doubt of the technology.

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Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash