Are street poles the key to rolling out a smart city? Lutz Heuser, CTO of Urban Software Institute believes these are the easiest way to connect a community and roll out mobile and Internet of Things technologies across a town.
“For us it’s the perfect example of how infrastructure can change things very quickly,” Heuser told Decoding The New Economy at the AIIA Internet of Things summit in Canberra last week.
Heuser sees the street poles as an easy success for cities looking to connect services and assets with most towns and utility companies replacing poles on a regular basis which provides an opportunity to roll out smart technologies.
“If you put in some extras like communications, sensors and environmental monitors and all of a sudden you create a whole new ecosystem that helps the citizens and the environment.”
Heuser sees funding as another advantage in using street poles to rollout smarcity technologies as the energy savings in modern LED lights as providing enough incentives for municipalities to replace older infrastructure.
The key though is leadership, both in business and politics, this is essential in Heuser’s view in getting the best return for smartcity and IoT investments.
As technologies like smart parking meters and connected rubbish bins roll out and municipal staff like garbage collectors and enforcement offices need real time connectivity, cities increasingly are going to rely upon wireless services. The humble street pole may well turn out to be the answer to what is otherwise an expensive problem.