The passing of the US government’s infrastructure bill could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make IoT more of a reality for ordinary people, according to Karen Lightman, executive director of the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

The institute helps those who have real-world problems such as landslides and air quality by using technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University to help solve their problems.

Speaking on technology expert Stacey Higgenbotham’s podcast, Lightman said the infrastructure investment provided an opportunity to build back better by, for example, laying fibre as roads are rebuilt to make these roads highly connected. This, she said, would future-proof the infrastructure investment.

She said infrastructure could be built in an intelligent way that addressed a lot of the inequities of previous infrastructure projects that often-divided communities, typically those belonging to people of colour. And it can do this while reducing emissions and improving safety.

“You can have all the sensor networks in the world but if they are not connected, they don’t work,” she said. They are not going to improve efficiency or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill includes a major investment in broadband, which Lightman believes could be a catalyst for investment by the private sector and she said she was excited at what this would mean for urban and rural communities. She said it would be a game changer that would allow more people to have access to the internet to start companies, apply for jobs, receive healthcare and telemedicine, apply for benefits, and more. This will improve quality of life many times over.

For smart cities, it could optimise connectivity through connected buildings and connected transportation.

But she warned that this had to be done with cyber security designed in from the chip level to generate trust in the community. People, she said, would not feel safe in a surveillance-oriented state.

This she said was an opportunity for companies to get ahead of what was going to happen and say they cared about safety, cyber security and trust and that and that everyone should own their data and decide how to share those data.

“We can put all this investment into IoT but if people feel like Big Brother is watching them, the tech backlash could be quite severe,” said Lightman.

Finally, she said it was time for broadband to be treated in the same way as other public utilities such as electricity and water.