Wireless Street Lamps for Traffic Monitoring

RMH101 writes "The Register has a story about a UK initiative to create a country-wide wireless data network using street lamps. It's come to pass through a government initiative to monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere. The company involved, Last Mile, are proposing an intelligent mesh of smart street lamps embedded with storage and wireless networking to create 200MBit network access across the UK, including remote areas not reachable by conventional broadband. Work is due to start this year."

Comments

Big Brother

[Ilex]

monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere

The UK gov has an obsession with monitoring it's citizens. London already has more CCTV than any other capital. On average you're court on camera 300 times a day.

I expect their excuse is to improve road safety. The real reason is so they can issue more speeding tickets and increase the number of tolls.

The UK Motorist already pays 3 taxes to use the roads. Duty at the gas pump, Road Tax and tolls to use public roads in the form of the London congestion charge.

Re:Putting expensive equipment

[strictnein]

Are you suggesting that people are going to start snapping these puppies off to steal the wireless routers

No, when a car hits them (which happens on a semi-frequent basis in any major metropolitan area). They're made to snap off to decrease the damage done to the car and occupants. They're also easier to repair if they snap completely off then if they would just bend when hit.
Next time you walk by one, take a little bit closer look at it. They're typically connected to the base by 4 large bolts usually with some type of cushioning, semi-plyable material in between. When a car hits it the four bolts snap and the pole falls over, typically breaking just the bolts and the light and causing minimal damage to the vehicle. To repair it they simply replace the light and the four bolts.

Plus only the antenna would need to be on the streetlight itself, the rest could be buried underground.

That wouldn't make too much sense and would be much more expensive/time consuming to install and repair. You don't see a lot of burried phone boxes. But who knows, this is the government.