LightRadio sounds like a great fit for urban areas, but the limited range makes it almost useless in most rural areas that lack the poles needed to make it work.
A company in the UK tested a network of dispersed mini cell phone transmitters across London a few years back. They were the size of a loaf of bread and could to be spaced about 400 feet apart. These sound like a smaller redesign of those units.
The biggest problem they had was getting the multiple hand offs in a short period of time working properly. A person walking 4 blocks in London might go through 2 cell tower zones today. The same walk could be as few as 2 towers or as many as 6 with this technology.
People walking had fewer problems than people in cars or buses. If they shrunk the size of their prototype enough they were looking into putting them on the buses or trains to better manage the roaming problem.
Who says a street lamp should just light our city streets?
It certainly wasn’t Douglas Coupland. He’s designed the ultimate utility pole. The “V-Pole” (short for Vancouver Pole) would maximize public infrastructure by creating an all-in-one street light that would also provide neighborhood Wi-Fi and other infrastructure. At the top of the pole there’s an LED street light, and built into the pole there’s Wi-Fi, technology to wirelessly charge your electric car, and cell phone infrastructure. Plus, you can pay for parking and check a digital bulletin board.
The National Post describes how the pole is a able to pack so much into a tiny space:
The core of the V-Pole is lightRadio, a device developed jointly by Bell Labs and telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent that compresses all the wires and circuit boards of a cellphone tower into a single Rubik’s cube-sized block. “You can stack them inside a pole like Lego,” said Mr. Coupland.
Vancouver is expected to move forward with placing the technology throughout the city.
Not only would the “V-Poles” be high-tech all-in-one utility poles, they would also reduce urban clutter with fewer telephone poles, wires, and the like. Coupland also claims that the design would be more energy-efficient and cost-effective than traditional utility infrastructure. And for cities interested in installing electric car chargers anyway, this could be a much more efficient infrastructure addition.
“You would never think of building a house or office tower without electricity,” said Coupland after unveiling his concept at last week’s New Cities Summit in Paris. “In the same way, you would never think of developing future cities without ‘V-Poles.’”
It’s a bold statement, but if Vancouver can prove them to be successful it might not be far from the truth.
All images courtesy of v-pole.com
