The strategic alliance agreement was signed between Terry He, President, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Middle East, and Ghazi Atallah, CEO of neXgen Group – in the presence of Zain Group CEO Scott Gegenheimer, and Huawei Middle East President, Charles Yang.

Both Huawei and neXgen will cooperate in the Smart City Go-to-Market (GTM) across the region with emphasis on markets within Zain’s footprint. The collaboration covers the design, release and marketing of joint Smart City solutions for smart districts and logistics, smart safety and security, and smart healthcare services. The agreement also covers cooperation in Smart Internet of things (IoT), and Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) technologies.

“This strategic collaboration with Huawei, a global ICT leader, will bring readily deployable solutions for Smart Cities and Districts, enabling our clients across the region to leverage these innovative services in their digital transformation journey. Delivering simple and effective services to our customers from our industry collaboration efforts is always our overarching goal.” said Ghazi Atallah, CEO of neXgen Group.

“This partnership is in line with our strategy to build an ecosystem that involves various industry players to enable an open, better connected world. This alliance allows us to capitalize on neXgen’s regional presence and know-how while addressing the ever-growing appetite for smart city solutions in Middle East,” said Mohamad Sharara, President of Zain Key Account Dept, Huawei ME.

Huawei comes with valuable experience in Smart City solutions, featuring the most extensive product line in the industry. Huawei has deployed Smart City solutions in over 100 cities in more than 30 countries worldwide, cooperating with over 1,100 technology providers and 800 services and system integrators.

neXgen Group specializes in extending smart city technology solutions as a service to governments, real estate and enterprise customers across the region and has been actively involved in flagship projects such as Smart Dubai and Smart Riyadh, contributing its regional consulting expertise and in-country Smart City managed services.

LiFi will change the way we work, play and manage our daily lives. This technology brings Dubai’s ambition to be a ‘Smart City’ to life. It provides endless possibilities for the Internet of Things (IoT), the connection between people and things. Zero.1 is at the very heart of this technology.

Zero.1’s research and development team have created a platform of LiFi enabled LED with their IOTA (Intelligent Outdoor Tower Automation) product range which takes the traditional LED street light and adds layers of communications. IOTA changes the way public spaces and resources are managed. Together with the advanced City.1 software, it provides experiential and management solutions for public spaces, community places, industrial hubs and commercial plots.

Marc Fleschen, CEO of Zero.1 says, “We are proud to say that in conjunction with our project partner du, we have been able to initiate the first demonstration of its kind in the Middle East. Working with du we look forward to the roll-out of our LiFi applications in the Dubai ‘Smart City’ platform and the retail sector as the year unfolds.”

Any private or public lighting including street lamps can be used to provide LiFi hotspots and the same communications and sensor infrastructure can be used to monitor and control lighting and data. IoS and Android Smartphones can be connected directly using LiFi. Short range links give very high data-speeds and best possible data security. LiFi driven geo-localisation services allow users to benefit from on-the-spot location and services information.

Zero.1 supports the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai the smartest city in the world and make the emirate one of the world’s most technologically advanced hubs. Zero.1 will demonstrate real-time LiFi conference hot spots and experiential activities in its Dubaitech offices.

With its combination of IOTA hardware, City.1 Software and Cloud services, Zero.1 will lead the commercialisation of LiFi technology in the UAE, with plans to also introduce it in other GCC countries shortly. LiFi applications that will impact multiple sectors such as street lighting, retail, healthcare, education, museums, and large public venues are in the development stage and are planned to be strategically launched this year.

City.1 is a management software solution that works with IOTA©; an LED LiFi enabled product. City.1 software bridges the gap between objects and people. With this communication tool, Smart City managers get more from their infrastructure and give more to citizens. The City.1 mobile application works on iOS and Android platforms. The IOTA Street light is embedded with the Cyrus card. Merged with Zero.1’s cloud platform, the city’s streetlight network becomes the centre of communication, between the city and its people, businesses and services to people, and people to people.

A striking advantage of LiFi is that it can boost the network speeds about 100 times faster than the conventional WIFI system available. LiFi is the fastest and cheapest wireless communication system and is the optical version of WIFI. It is believed that the technology can yield speeds more than 10 Gbps, allowing an HD film to be downloaded within 30 seconds. Every light source in homes and offices could potentially be a LiFi within 20 years. You can watch and download videos at super speed, and browse new websites in a blink. Another advantage is security, as LiFi does not travel between walls the data is more secure. LiFi does not interfere with radio signals and is safe to use in radio frequency sensitive environments such as aircraft, nuclear plants, and oil rigs. It is also safer for environments such as hospitals, medical centres, and schools.

The beauty of this technology is its simplicity. Every LED light bulb could be converted into a wireless router with the addition of a small microchip. The conversion LED lights will also reduce carbon emissions and result in conservation of energy.

Zero.1 has signed a partnership with du, recently and together they have demonstrated the capability of LiFi technology in Dubai. They will commercially launch applications in the UAE soon.