LA's Smart LED Street Lights Boost Wireless Connectivity (philips.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Los Angeles will introduce a smart street lighting system, featuring connected LEDs and fully-integrated 4G LTE wireless technology. In a collaboration between Dutch tech firm Philips and Swedish telco Ericsson, the SmartPole project aims to deliver LA citizens public lighting which is energy efficient and improves network performance in urban areas. By the close of this week, a total of 24 SmartPoles will be installed across the Hollywood area. The city plans to place 100 poles over the coming year, with a further 500 to follow.

Comments

Hmmm ...

[gstoddart]

So the cynic in me says "we'll be able to see you better, and monitor your cellphone activity better".

According to Ericsson senior vice president and head of business unit Radio, Arun Bansal, LA is becoming a role model for other smart cities developing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Oh, I see .. LA has been hoodwinked into funding someone's marketing drive, and LA will be the reference case for how they leveraged their synergies with emerging IoT technologies to deliver the blah blah blahs in an agile manner.

Give it a few years, it won't work, it will have cost too much, and will be found to have massive security holes which can't be fixed without spending huge sums of money.