Shanghai partners with MXC Foundation to improve smart city technology

The government in Shanghai’s Yangpu district has entered into an agreement with the Berlin-based non-profit MXC Foundation to increase the efficiency and reliability of wireless smart city data transmissions.

The agreement, part of China’s National Innovative Development Strategy, is to deploy the MXC’s IoT standard, MXProtocol, in Shanghai and explore blockchain technology’s role in improving the government management services.

“The focus is on smart city data management, allowing for all city data—for example, air quality, traffic conditions, and building occupancy—to be managed and run exclusively via MXC and the MXProtocol,” Aaron Wagener, co-founder and COO at MXC, said in an email. The goal, he said, is to improve both data transmission speed and the quantity of captured data.

The first layer of the MXC platform, which has been rolled out in New York City, South Korea and soon Shanghai, involves deploying low-power, wide-area network (LPWAN) as well as thousands of IoT sensors around the city to collect data, Wagener told Technode. The protocol is expected to allow more sensors and devices to be connected and data to travel more quickly and efficiently.

MXC is assisting the government with the deployment in Yangpu district.

“The Shanghai district and MXC are cooperating in the construction of smart cities and the development of the IoT industry,” said Shen Xin, Shanghai Yangpu District Government Director, in a statement shared with TechNode. Yangpu, a district in the northeast of Shanghai, is transforming itself from an industrial base to a tech innovation zone.

Wireless networks such as Wi-Fi can become slow and overstrained when connected with too many sensors and devices, Wagener said. “As a result, a lot of the data that can be captured either isn’t being captured or isn’t being captured correctly.” Less than 10% of smart city data is captured and the company’s mission is to increase the data catch to more than 80%, he said.

Users on the MXC platform can share and trade their data, collected through IoT devices, on the MXC data market for cryptocurrency tokens. The data listed in the market can be traced, making it difficult to tamper with. This new IoT data sharing economy will enable institutions to purchase valuable data from users who are willing to sell them.

Driven by growing urban population and favorable government policies, China’s smart cities market is growing rapidly. Market size is projected to reach $59.9 billion by 2023, nearly double the $30.4 billion in 2018, according to a recent forecast by market research firm MarketsandMarkets.

MXC is backed by prominent industry players such as Huobi, LongHash, VeChain, Fenbushi, and NodeCapital. To date, the company has already inked partnerships in more than 40 countries around the world.