Behold Smart Pole, The Greatest Pole Of All
Los Angeles unveiled its first “Smart Pole” today in Hollywood. The new pole is a cross between a street light and a cellphone tower, and according to city leaders, it’s all free.
Mayor Garcetti, who spoke at a press conference held on Santa Monica Boulevard, seemed more excited about the Smart Poles' financial benefits than its technology.
“By leasing the valuable digital real estate on top of these poles,” Mayor Garcetti said, “These poles will self fund and then generate hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars in revenue.”
According to Bureau of Street Lighting Director Ed Ebrahimian, the city will take in $1,200 in rent annually from each smart pole. The city plans on having 600 in operation by 2018, at which point the city would be collecting $720,000 per year.
The effort to upgrade L.A.’s street lights is a joint project between the city, Dutch electronics company Philips and Swedish and cell phone company Ericcson. The Mayor credited the public-private partnership with speeding up the process of getting the poles in the ground.
Philips is paying for the poles as well as covering the cost for installation, reimbursing the city $10,000 per pole.
“It’s really no additional operational cost,” said Philips’ spokesperson Christoph Herzig. “For the mobile operators [cell phone providers] it’s the same as working on a rooftop cell site.”
The benefit, as he and city leaders see it, is that ugly cell phone towers will now look no more unusual than a regular city street light. The Smart Poles also have the added benefit of being able to monitor and regulate energy usage in real time.
One thing that Herzig would not discuss was cost. When asked at the press conference and later by this reporter about the actual price of a Smart Pole, the spokesman responded that Philips was not “disclosing commercial agreements.”
The spokesperson also wouldn’t comment on what cities are next in line to get the Smart Poles, although he did say that two more would be announced shortly. Herzig did emphasize that while the program is international in scope, the United States is seen as the number one market for the hi-tech street lighting.
The city is putting the lights in at a rate of two per week. So far the Bureau of Street Lighting has installed 22 Smart Poles, mostly in Hollywood.
Ebrahimian hopes that the program will grow past the city’s current 600 pole commitment. If it does, more public-private partnerships are likely in the works.
“I would think two or three thousand over the next five years,” he said. “We are working with other carriers, not just Philips and Ericcson.”
