Verizon Is Moving From Telephone Poles To Light Poles for Smart Devices (fortune.com) 22
An anonymous reader shares a Fortune report:Verizon is moving from telephone poles to street lighting poles with its latest acquisition to bolster its Internet of things business. The telecom giant has been looking for new growth areas around connected smart devices -- including water meters, self-driving cars, and drones -- as some of its traditional markets slow. On Monday, Verizon said it was buying privately-held Sensity, a company that puts sensors in LED street lamps to perform functions such as monitoring traffic and detecting security threats. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. It's the latest in a string of acquisitions to bolster the carrier's IoT unit. Verizon agreed to pay $2.4 billion for truck tracking service Fleetmatics last month and startup Telogis, another fleet-tracker, earlier this summer.
Communities should negotaite for free Wi-Fi (Score:2)
Being that Version is going to the Last Mile to internet connect all these devices. They might as well offer free Wi-Fi on those as a "Value Add"
Die, IoT, die! (Score:2, Insightful)
a company that puts sensors in LED street lamps to perform functions such as monitoring traffic and detecting security threats.
Where "sensors" means "cameras", and "monitoring traffing and detecting security threats" means "watching everyone and everything". And the image feeds will probably have license-plate reading and face recognition thrown in, or could with the next software upgrade.
And since it's a corporation doing it (Verizon) vs a government agency, warrants etc don't enter into it. (No expect
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It would be pretty slick if they could detect when a person or vehicle was in range of the streetlight, and turn the light off when not needed. That would save an enormous amount of power if deployed on millions of lights. Astronomers would also love the idea. The justification for street lights is that they improve safety and reduce crime, but there is little evidence that they are effective at either.
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Not so sure if I would want the light outside my house turning on and off all night.
Try closing the curtain.
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>"Not so sure if I would want the light outside my house turning on and off all night."
Me neither. So, imagine what driving would be with lights that turn on only when you are close enough THEY could see you. It would be a mess. And how would they "see" pedestrians and bikes at night, accurately?
I think just having them be a lot more efficient and aimed properly (designed for proper light dispersion only where it is needed) would do what we need to save tons of energy while generating less glare and l
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I think just having them be a lot more efficient and aimed properly (designed for proper light dispersion only where it is needed) would do what we need to save tons of energy while generating less glare and light pollution. Also, I don't think they really need to be anywhere near as bright as they typically are... and if they were a proper color, that might help things too (that horrible, sick, orange color of sodium lights and anemic green/blue of mercury vapor lights really doesn't help).
The new LED stre
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Already done. Auckland, New Zealand is busy installing these at the moment. The existing mostly sodium bulb fittings are being replaced with LED fittings, on the quieter streets the lights will be equiped with motion sensors that will turn on the lights for the whole when they detect a car.
30% of all streetlights are being replaced over a 3 year period. Total cost for the project -$20 million, yes negative, the savings in electricity move than covers the cost of replacing the lights.
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Actually just going to LED street lights eliminates a lot of light pollution. Before our town made the switch to LED street lights I could see the light pollution 10 miles out of town proper any night of the year. With the LED street lights I only see the light pollution produced if there is a low cloud cover or light fog.
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the tollways do not do that.
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The cameras in street lamps or traffic lights now are extremely low resolution, just good enough to keep track of traffic. In many cases there were put up before there was a way to get the information back out again at anything but low bit rates. I'm in a business that deals with street light controllers and they're not for spying and would be amazingly expensive to do so as high speed networking isn't there. Sure you can be like Verizon and use cellular to get the data back but they're not giving you th
Nothing to see here (Score:1)
Seeing how awful a company they have proven to be, this is nuts. It seems that this would be setting them up as a service provider to the government with the prime function of snooping on the public. A camera and other sensors in every street light, and who knows what else. [insert catchy cliche about disaster/dehumanization here]
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"Awful" doesn't quite cover it. "Inept" is what I think of. I was recently informed my router from Verizon was no longer supported. I could belly up to the bar for a new, used router for $69.99. Seeing as I had no choice or get nicked a bit more every month for the router they were no longer supporting, I decided to bite the bullet and, screw it, I'm busy, so get the new frikken router.
Go to web site...it no recognize my password I set nigh two months ago. Attempt to get a new password. Its password Strengt
Lightspy (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.sensity.com/compute... [sensity.com]
http://www.sensity.com/for-sec... [sensity.com]
Oh great, just what we need- turning all the hundreds of thousands of streetlamps into spy cameras. Monitor all vehicles, read and store all plates, monitor all pedestrians, monitor all houses and driveways, add facial recognition. Oh, but it is in "public spaces" and so it would never be abused... everything will be transparent, it would never be hacked either..... right.
Of course... (Score:2)
Verizon announced that they'll be using radios mounted on light poles for their IoT initiative.
In the mid 90's that's how Metricom mounted their radios, having a selection of power taps that fit the several standard light sensors on top of the poles, making deals with cities, either paying for the access or trading in exchange for wirleless interent. Besides supporting consumers who just wanted internet access, they were initially targeting municipalities, meters and such. ( before IoT was coined ). I us