As phones, cars, and even kitchen appliances get smarter, so will one other thing: cities. Although smart cities are still a ways off in the future, premier wireless and communications network AT&T and tech firm IBM announced a partnership Tuesday that should surely help speed up the process.

The two giants will share analytic platforms, cloud, and security technologies in an effort to help city governments and midsize utilizes. AT&T and IBM hope to bolster efficiency in areas by collecting and then analyzing data from sources such as mass transit vehicles, utility meters, and video cameras. AT&T and IBM stress that despite the sharing of resources, the two companies do not intend to disclose any private information. 

"This collaboration of two world-class companies will help deliver a more connected planet," said Chris Hill, Senior Vice President, AT&T Advanced Solutions. "We share a vision that the 'Internet of Things' will help companies in a variety of industries rely on their remote assets and connected devices to take their business to the next level."

"Smarter cities, cars, homes, machines and consumer devices will drive the growth of the Internet of Things along with the infrastructure that goes with them, unleashing a wave of new possibilities for data gathering, predictive analytics, and automation," said Rick Qualman, vice president of Strategy & Business Development at Telecom Industry, IBM. "The new collaboration with AT&T will offer insights from crowdsourcing, mobile applications, sensors and analytics on the cloud, enabling all organizations to better listen, respond and predict."

Cities that can efficiently regulate certain utilities and tasks using a large pool of analytics and data have been touted as the next-generation urban setting. Smart cities would, in theory, be able to regulate traffic flow and even emergency services to a degree far above and beyond human counterparts.

The AT&T and IBM partnership will focus on providing city planners with the following key areas, according to the press release:

1) Better allocate and distribute resources based on information reported from incidents and service disruptions.

2) Analyze the movement of people to improve traffic management, parking capacity, location and number of first unit responders. City officials can better prepare and react to potential bottlenecks and other issues in case of an emergency.

3) Identify inefficient traffic patterns so that traffic can be re-routed; better allocate public safety resources in places where majority of people congregate.

4) Monitor social media updates from citizens reporting bad weather or major traffic so the city can take best course of action.

The research will be a collaborative effort meant at promoting and strengthening the foundation for the "Internet of Things," a scenario in which objects have unique electronic identifiers and mindsets and can interact without any human intervention. In order to achieve this, AT&T is bringing its M2M network, devices, and SIM assets to the table. IBM, meanwhile, will provide the backend support with facilities such as the Intelligent Operations Center, Maximo Asset Management, and IBM MessageSight MQTT Appliance, which complements IBM MobileFirst solutions.