Cisco introduces $1 billion smart city financing program

Cisco announced the launch of a $1 billion financing program to help cities pay for smart city projects. Upgrading and adding smart technology to public infrastructure can be quite costly, and in many cases has proven to be a major stumbling block for municipalities looking to start their smart city transformations. Cisco’s City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Program aims to give cities more avenues to fund such projects.

This program offers a way for cities to partner with the public sector to purse new smart city ambitions. Funding through the program will be available to cities and city service providers through traditional loans, revenue sharing, equity financing, and other methods.

Although there have been efforts to boost federal funding for smart city projects, cities have struggled to finance smart city initiatives with public funding. Ideally, this will allow a city to pursue new endeavors to reduce energy usage, ease traffic and parking, or boost public transportation ridership and revenues, to name a few possible areas that may benefit. This will be interesting to watch unfold as smart technologies continue to develop and how cities are able to embrace them moving forward.

Source: StateScoop