Samsun province has signed a Smart City cooperation protocol with Turkey's leading mobile network operator Turkcell and Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
Huawei Turkey General Manager Li Shen, Turkcell General Manager Kaan Terzioğlu and Samsun Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Zihni Şahin signed the cooperation protocol on Sunday at a ceremony held in a hotel in Samsun.
Delivering a speech at the signing ceremony, Shen said that Huawei has been operating in more than 170 countries and regions across the world.
Specifying that they serve one-third of the world's population, Shen stated that Turkey is a crucial country for Huawei.
"Thanks to our world-class advanced technology, we continue to work hard to make Turkey more adaptable to 5G, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud, smart and secure city and similar future-oriented solutions," Shen added, stressing that they have important operations in Turkey.
Touching on the digitalization of the economy, Shen emphasized that the Turkish economy and the global economy are becoming digital and smarter.
"In order to achieve this digitalization, one that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also leads, smart countries and smart cities must be actualized in a more widespread way. Samsun is one of the leading cities of the Black Sea region and Turkey in terms of economic capacity and infrastructure," he said.
He further noted that all the stakeholders of the project have reached an agreement in Samsun to activate the "Smart City" project which will set an example to Turkey.
"With this project, we aim to enable the people of Samsun to experience the most up-to-date smart city technologies before anyone else and to make the most of digital transformation at many points in the city," Huawei Turkey's general manager added. Samsun Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Zihni Şahin emphasized that traffic is the most important problem in the city.
Underlining that they have made agreements with Huawei and Turkcell to solve these problems, Şahin stated that there is a continuous flow of information among them.
"What matters is making Samsun a more livable and peaceful city by eliminating traffic and other problems. We have focused all our efforts on this," the mayor said. "I hope that Samsun will not have such a big [traffic] problem and this agreement will help ease our troubles."
Within the scope of the protocol, Turkcell and Huawei will develop cooperation and technical solutions in Samsun in the fields of smart city, smart transportation, smart agriculture, smart meter, smart parking and et cetera.
Turkcell will provide cloud computing services through data centers with fixed broadband (FBB), mobile broadband (MBB) and NB-IOT connectivity services required to implement the project. Huawei will provide vertical solutions including smart transportation, smart water and smart parking solutions, as well as IP and IT products.