Cisco launches smart city financing
Cisco's new City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Program offers $1 billion in debt and equity capital financing to cities and smart city services providers.
Nobody said building a smart city is cheap.
New technologies, upgraded networks and the associated resources can create a burden on cash-strapped cities struggling to improve services and attract talent and businesses.
Cisco's new City Infrastructure Financing Acceleration Program seeks to address that challenge. CIFAP offers $1 billion in debt and equity capital financing to cities and urban services operators, such as telecommunications services providers and systems integrators that facilitate smart city services.
The public-private-partnership vehicle has several financing options. Cities can choose from traditional loans and leases, consumption-based or as-a-service-based financing or concession financing that delivers incremental revenues and cost savings. Urban services operators can apply for revenue-share financing or equity financing.
CIFAP will not only give cities a way to deploy cutting-edge technology with a minimal initial investment, but it will also let them "more closely tie the cost of financing to the desired outcomes of their smart infrastructure projects," Cisco said in its blog.
The program, which was announced Nov. 14 at the Smart City expo in Barcelona, also offers flexible payments and has end-of-term options for cities to return, purchase or upgrade their technology.
The funding is provided through Cisco Capital and its financing partners -- private equity firm Digital Alpha Advisors, APG Asset Management, and Whitehelm Capital.
The company also announced new purchasing options for Cisco Kinetic for Cities, its cloud-based internet of things platform. The options include prepackaged starter solutions, which combine the Cisco IoT data platform and services with those from its partners into ready-to-roll-out solution suites.
The platform itself has also been upgraded to include enhanced support for public safety that enables capture and aggregation of data from cameras, sensors and other sources. A new waste management solution improves trash collection efficiency by optimizing pick-up routes based on real-time volume sensors in waste containers.
NEXT STORY: For Some Local Officials Fighting Opioid Crisis, Feds Are All Talk And Offer Very Little Money