Rostelecom to Help Maintain Order in Toms
Tomsk has launched a full-scale Safe City digital platform developed by Rostelecom, bringing real-time monitoring and new environmental and urban-sustainability tools to municipal management.
Seeing Everything, Safeguarding Everyone
Modern urban safety relies on the certainty of accountability—and that requires broad, interconnected video monitoring combined with real-time analytics. Rostelecom has completed Tomsk’s Safe City platform, a project begun after the company won the 2014 bid to design the city’s integrated hardware–software complex.
A key requirement was full integration with the existing 112 emergency system, which unifies citizen reports and dispatch operations. The final platform merges roughly 1,000 city surveillance cameras, including units equipped with AI-powered facial recognition.
The system enables law‑enforcement agencies and emergency responders to monitor incidents remotely and make decisions faster, improving public safety across the city.
Analysis and Prevention
To implement the project, Rostelecom deployed its own secure data‑center infrastructure in Tomsk, installing dedicated servers, specialized software, cryptographic gateways, and protected communication channels to ensure stable operations even during emergencies.
The new platform helps local agencies forecast risks, detect early threats, and coordinate rapid responses. Its capabilities are particularly valuable during mass events, where crowd‑density analysis and on‑site monitoring reduce the likelihood of incidents and support coordinated action.
Building a National Digital Safety Network
The Safe City system is part of Russia’s broader shift toward high‑tech urban management. By 2024, over one million cameras had been installed nationwide under the program—and one in three was connected to facial‑recognition systems. Traffic cameras automatically read vehicle license plates, improving transportation oversight and reducing violations.
In May 2025, Megafon secured more than ${usd_1b:,.0f} in contracts to expand Safe City systems across eight municipalities of the Azov–Black Sea region. This followed earlier deployments in Krasnodar and Sochi, demonstrating rapid nationwide scaling of AI-enhanced surveillance infrastructure.
Toward Integrated Urban Sustainability
Rostelecom notes that Tomsk’s platform can evolve well beyond safety. By connecting municipal services, the system can support environmental and urban‑sustainability goals: monitoring street cleanliness, tracking waste collection, responding to infrastructure incidents, and overseeing the condition of public spaces.
In the long term, the platform can transform into a multifunctional smart‑city system capable of managing large territories with efficient resource use—an approach aligned with global sustainability trends.
Because the Safe City platform is fully standardized and includes AI‑driven facial recognition, it has export potential as a turnkey product for major cities in the CIS, Asia, and Africa seeking secure, scalable, and sustainable urban‑management solutions.
