Prysmian at Eurocities Cluj-Napoca 2024
Connectivity and digitization grow communities and bring people together
A locality connected to the Internet has all the services of the modern world in which we live. Even if it seems something inconceivable to us, there are still many localities in Romania that do not benefit from high-speed internet and therefore from the benefits of the modern world.
As part of Eurocities 2024, which took place in Cluj-Napoca between May 29 and 31, Prysmian presented the pilot project it implemented in the town of Petreștii de Jos, together with the C-EDU Education Cluster. The town of Petreștii de Jos, located only about 18 kilometers from the metropolis of Cluj and next to the A3 highway, was a town isolated from digital services and without high-speed mobile internet access. For this, Prysmian decided to offer an innovative solution through which, with the help of an optical fiber network installed in the locality, the commune of Petreștii de Jos could benefit from broadband internet services and reconnect with the Cluj metropolitan area of which it is a part. This is how the Rural-Urban Hub came into being, a whole suite of technical solutions and digital applications for the development of local communities, with the help of technology.
At this year's event, Prysmian physically presented the most important applications of this Rural-Urban Hub and organized workshops in direct transmission between Petreștii de Jos and the lobby of the event, where local authorities and people from the commune could connect live with the participants of the event and with those who wanted to transfer themselves a little to the countryside, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. The portal that Prysmian installed between the two towns, Cluj-Napoca and Petreștii de Jos, made it possible with the help of the internet for people from the rural area to participate in the conference of the most developed cities in Europe, but also to discover how digitization helps the development of a community.
Thus, new partnerships were concluded on the education side, between the rural school and the Botnar foundation, partnerships between local and metropolitan authorities to continue the development of digital services for residents and also to offer new applications within the locality with the help of the Internet.
The Rural-Urban Hub concept implemented by Prysmian in Petreștii de Jos can be replicated in other localities in the country and is aimed at the 945 localities that can receive funding through PNRR for connecting to high-speed internet services.