Naquada

Wireless lamp posts take over the world? well maybe but there seems to be two people assuming rights over doing it…

Westminster council announced last year that is was planning to put forward a radical scheme to put wifi on all its lamp posts, with the aim of providing wireless connectivity to council works, but with the hope of also being able to sell it to the public, basically making a ‘net’ of interconnected hotspots around westminster..

unfortuantly (or fotunantly depending on how you look at it…) a startup company Last Mile has officially revealed its plans to install 150,000 wireless circuits, including memory, in 150,000 lamp posts in the UK. To do this, it takes advantage of a near-global agreement on roadside telematics - monitoring vehicles - on which in plans to piggy-back commercial services. Westminster council wasnt overly chuffed at this..

now theres a difference between the two options;

The Last Mile technology uses very much faster data than WiFi can achieve, and enhances this with clever proxy/cache design. Each lamp post contains not only the 63-65 GHz wireless unit, but a large memory store, which will hold around 80% of the data that most people will want to download, Data which isn’t in the post will be sucked from the Internet over a variety of backhaul routes; if necessary, from lamp post to post in a high speed mesh, if no other backbone is handy.

the westminster council option seems to be more ‘traditional’ wifi

my money is on the last mile option, its more flexible and wider reaching.. but either option sounds like a good starter, the UK is sadly lagging behind in wifi connectivity, unless you want to pay silly prices to be online when your out..

sources:
NewsWireless.net -
Unexpected rivalry for ownership of lamp posts - Last Mile v Westminster
Startup company corners the future: wireless lamp posts take over world!

The Register -
Wireless lamp posts take over world!