Driving through Anytown, USA, you will see a variety of streetlights illuminating the road you are driving on. Some are tall enough to cover a large area, while others are more decorative and located in the center of the city, giving the town a unique character. Whatever the form, local governments large and small are beginning to realize the true value of these structures.
In the 5G era, cellular and neutral host providers are interested in expanding their wireless networks to provide better data performance in densely populated areas. As a result, municipalities, utilities, and other private companies that operate streetlights have made their structures “smart” by incorporating 5G/LTE wireless and fiber for connectivity. This has provided a significant revenue stream to support the operation of these streetlights, but that is not the only value they have.
Streetlights extend to more city services.
Imagine a municipality that receives calls every day from residents to fix potholes, fix illegal parking, tow vehicles blocking the road, heat problems in apartments, dangerous intersections, water backups, etc. Solving these problems takes money, manpower, and time. For example, in some cities, it can take a year or more to survey a road to fix a pothole, and by the time you call to have someone’s car blocking your road towed, you’re probably already late for an important meeting.
The good news is that the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is enabling governments to build new and better services and improve connections with their constituents. Digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) are changing people’s lives by connecting people, machines, vehicles, infrastructure, and buildings. For example, light detection and ranging (LIDR) technology can be used to record crime scenes in 3D, forensic examinations, and measure pollution levels. LIDR is also being used to enable autonomous vehicles and serve unique purposes in avoiding fatalities on the road.
Today, smart poles, or smart infrastructure, are retrofitted with Cisco’s IoT industrial networking to provide scalable, citywide secure connectivity to IoT devices mounted on the poles. These smart poles also offer Cisco’s industrial wireless to connect devices that are not physically connected, such as electric, water, and parking meters. They are also being used to provide Internet access to residents who do not have access to the Internet, such as in the city of Fort Worth, Texas. Smart poles can also be networked wirelessly, leveraging Cisco’s ultra-reliable wireless backhaul to provide fiber-like quality and performance where physical fiber is impractical or costly.
Regardless of size, municipalities can effectively scale government services by leveraging streetlights and fiber as strategic assets to provide residents with improved cellular coverage, leverage fiber for broadband access, and leverage the power of IoT and AI/ML to solve critical problems. Today, sensors like those equipped with LIDR technology can alert residents to poor air quality, provide early warning systems to avoid traffic collisions, provide information on poor road conditions, and provide a host of other solutions to improve residents’ quality of life.
Join us in FiberInterlink24
Cisco is a proud member of the Fiber Broadband Association. We will be speaking at Fiber.Interlink This is our annual conference in Nashville, July 28-31, 2024. My colleagues at Cisco and I will be speaking in the following sessions, and you are invited.
Monday, July 29, 2024
- Build America Buy America: Delivering a Piece of the American Pie
12:30 PM CST – Robin Olds, Cisco - Out in the Middle: The middle mile between cities, suburbs, and the countryside
1:30 PM CST – Albert Garcia, Cisco - Expo Theater: Rethinking Broadband Access Networks
3:00 PM CST – Bradley Riapolov, Cisco
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
- Build 201: Creating Demand and Mitigating Risk in New Markets
1:30 PM CST – Abel Ramirez, Cisco - Broadband Policy Symposium
3:00 PM CST – Miranda Lutz, Cisco
Please follow the following hashtags during the event: #FiberBroadband #FBA #FiberConnect24
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