I-Berhad is bolstering its digital offerings in i-City with the metaverse concept in collaboration with China's telecommunication giant China Mobile.
The term "metaverse" refers to a shared interactive 3D virtual world that has been heralded as the next evolution of the internet.
The concept came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic as lockdown measures increased demand for online business and entertainment.
Shanghai is now setting the pace for smart cities.
In a ranking created by the Juniper Research agency, Shanghai was named 2022’s top smart city in the world, beating out Seoul, Barcelona, Beijing, and New York.
The Chinese city set itself apart with its Citizen Cloud. This platform for Shanghai residents serves as the only access point necessary for reaching more than a thousand different services and helps them find the information they need to make daily life easier.
Read more: CN: Shanghai named top ‘smart city’ in the world for 2022
Hong Kong was accelerating plans to roll out the Government’s Smart City Blueprint long before the COVID-19 pandemic. First introduced in 2017, the blueprint aims to improve all aspects of Hong Kong citizens’ daily lives by using technology and data.
The blueprint sets out 76 initiatives in six smart areas to develop the city’s digital infrastructure. These include “Smart Mobility”, “Smart Living”, “Smart Environment”, “Smart People”, “Smart Government” and “Smart Economy”. The city has started to experience some of the major benefits stemming from these developments during the last three years, including the introduction of free Wi-Fi hotspots, the Faster Payment System (FPS), and the “iAM Smart” platform.
Increased public attention to deliver more sustainable cities as well as the rising adoption of digital services during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have led to increasingly favourable views of smart city development efforts over the long term, KPMG's latest annual regional survey on sustainable urban development finds.
78 percent of respondents in Hong Kong SAR, nine mainland China cities within the Greater Bay Area (GBA), Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Shanghai say their interest in sustainability initiatives has increased since the start of the pandemic, while 84 percent say the pandemic has boosted their awareness of new technologies and applications that have improved their quality of life, according to KPMG's survey of 4,096 residents (1,038 respondents were polled in Hong Kong SAR, along with 506 across nine mainland China GBA cities, 500 in Bangkok, 528 in Ho Chi Minh City, 508 in Kuala Lumpur, 514 in Singapore and 502 in Shanghai).
China is investing heavily in digital connectivity along the BRI
China’s growing technological expertise along its digital silk road is expected to set benchmarks for the rest of the world to follow, according to analysts.
President Xi’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) started down the digital silk road long before the rest of the world began talking about connected smart cities and technology driven solutions.