One of the special reports in the Smart City series

Author: Li Dongsheng

July 3, 2021

What is a smart light pole?

On Qiaoxiang Road in Shenzhen, you will find that the street lights here are not only for illumination, but also have automatic brightness adjustment. Pedestrian and vehicle traffic lights can sense and release, and can identify cracks, potholes, and accumulated water on the road surface. Black technology such as manhole covers, signs, signs, guardrails, etc. can also be used to check for damage.

At the Beijing Road Pedestrian Street in Guangzhou, you will find that the street lights here not only provide illumination, but also charge your phone that is about to shut down, connect to Wi Fi, advertise, video surveillance, etc

Smart light pole is a general term for poles/towers and other facilities that comprehensively carry multiple devices and sensors and have intelligent capabilities, including but not limited to communication poles/towers, street light poles, and monitoring poles. The functions of smart light poles are determined by the devices and sensors mounted on them. These devices and sensors can access networks and platforms through various communication technologies, and provide rich intelligent applications with the Internet, artificial intelligence, big data and other ICT technologies. As a new entrance to the new smart city, smart light poles integrate 5G base stations, smart lighting, smart security, smart meteorology, information dissemination, charging stations, human vehicle road collaboration equipment, as well as new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence. They can collect information at the front-end and provide various urban big data support for the back-end IoT platform. Under the strategic deployment of promoting new infrastructure in China, smart light poles have become the public infrastructure for urban information construction in the 5G era.

The development process and prospects of smart lamp posts

The concept of smart cities emerged in 1993, and it wasn't until 2015 that the first truly smart light pole was built in the United States. 2016 was the first year of the implementation of smart light poles in China. From 2017 to 2018, the development of smart light pole technology became increasingly mature but was hindered by issues such as operation and profit models. 2019, as the first year of 5G commercialization, created new opportunities for the development of smart street lights. In November 2020, European ETSI officially released the standard for smart light poles. In December 2020, China formulated the national standard "Smart City, Smart Multi functional Pole Service Function and Operation Management Specification". 2021 is the starting year of the 14th Five Year Plan, and new infrastructure is still the explosive point of social and economic development in 2021.

In the context of new infrastructure, major cities are actively promoting the construction of smart light poles and smart cities. Let's take a look at the planning of smart light pole construction in the four first tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

Beijing: Although the target number of smart light poles is not specified in the plan, in the Action Plan of Beijing to Accelerate the Construction of New Infrastructure (2020-2022), key tasks such as 5G network construction, Internet of Vehicles, industrial Internet, industrial park ecology, and charging piles all involve smart light poles. At present, Beijing is building smart light poles in stages. At the same time, by 2022, Beijing will basically build new infrastructure with an international leading level.

Shanghai: According to the Action Plan for Promoting the Construction of New Infrastructure in Shanghai (2020-2022), a new round of 48 major projects with a total investment of approximately 270 billion yuan will be launched in Shanghai in the next three years. The construction actions of new networks, new facilities, new platforms, new terminals, etc. in the 35 new infrastructure projects in Shanghai all involve smart light poles. Multi pole integration is the main trend in the construction of smart light poles in Shanghai. Since 2018, Shanghai has launched a three-year renovation project for overhead lines entering the ground and connecting poles. At present, about 15000 comprehensive poles have been constructed, and it is planned to build another 20000 comprehensive poles by the end of 2022.

Guangzhou: In the "Three Year Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of Digital New Infrastructure in Guangzhou (2020-2022)", it is explicitly stated to accelerate the development of smart light poles, striving to build 34000 smart light poles by the end of 2022 and build a world-class intelligent "innovative smart city". In order to further promote the construction of smart light poles, Guangzhou has recently released multiple smart light pole projects, with a total construction quantity of 80000 sets and a cumulative project amount of about 3.6 billion yuan.

Shenzhen: The "Special Plan for Information and Communication Infrastructure in Shenzhen" formulated in December 2020 proposes to build 24000 multi-functional smart poles by 2022 and 47000 multi-functional smart poles by 2025. In this year's "Several Opinions of the Shenzhen Municipal People's Government on Accelerating the Construction of Smart Cities and Digital Governments", it is pointed out that by further optimizing the layout of multifunctional intelligent poles, by 2025, Shenzhen will build urban intelligent agents with deep learning capabilities, becoming a global benchmark for new smart cities and a model for "Digital China" cities.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of lamp posts in China in 2019 was about 29.35 million, which is more than ten times the number of communication towers in the country. If security and transportation poles are added, the scale is even more astonishing. A research report shows that in 2020, the total market value of smart street lights driven by the construction of 5G base stations was 117.6 billion yuan. According to CTIA's prediction, the market size of various hardware and services with smart light poles as the entrance in China in 2021 may reach 3.7 trillion yuan, accounting for 20% of the total market size of smart cities, which is a large cake worth over one trillion yuan every year.

Figure 2: Smart Lamp Posts in Various Regions of China

At present, the construction of smart light poles in China should pay attention to the following issues

1、 The practicality and value realization at the application level require further development and innovation. Through recent explorations, there are no obvious technological bottlenecks for smart lamp posts. Currently, smart lamp posts have entered a stage of gradual standardization and normalization. With the widespread application of new generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data, the application scenarios of smart light poles have become more extensive than ever before. However, the practicality and value of application scenarios need further development and innovation, which has become particularly urgent at present. At present, many applications are often limited by existing concepts, and developers need to shift their thinking from passive scenarios to active scenarios, such as free flow on highways without barriers, targeted advertising on various roads, city wide and even national tracking of people and vehicles, tracking the whereabouts of specific individuals such as missing persons, and automatic adjustment during peak urban traffic hours.

2、 The construction of smart lamp posts requires a systematic and comprehensive planning to avoid duplicate construction and data silos. At present, urban managers have realized the problems of redundant construction and data silos. In urban construction, more and more efforts are being made to start from the overall top-level design of the city, upgrading from scattered roadside poles to a multi-purpose "smart light pole" construction model to carry communication stations and various sensors, which is also in line with the construction concept of "new infrastructure". The method of unified planning and investment construction by the government, and unified operation and management by government departments or state-owned enterprises, has achieved relatively good results. Typical cases include Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. However, this model is suitable for local governments with strong financial strength. It adopts the financial responsibility system, led by local government units, with overall planning and multi party participation. For places with relatively average financial strength, it is still necessary to continue exploring ways to adapt to their own financial capabilities while avoiding duplicate construction and data silos.

3、 The business model needs further exploration, and the profitability situation is still unclear. If underground construction is considered, the initial construction cost of a single pole can reach 150000 yuan, and after adding attachments, the cost of a single pole can reach 210000 yuan. This is a significant investment for both the government and manufacturers. After the pilot construction of smart lamp posts, it is particularly urgent to explore their commercial profit models. At the same time, smart light poles have become a necessary path for urban development to a certain level and for building smart cities and digital governments. Currently, they are being promoted and developed from first tier cities to second tier cities in China. When exploring the commercial profit model of smart lamp posts, it is necessary to actively engage in government enterprise cooperation, while also considering public welfare, confidentiality, government affairs, and commercial aspects, in order to better promote the development of informationization and digitization in China's smart cities.

4、 The quality of smart lamp posts and supporting products varies greatly, and there is still room for improvement in terms of reliability, especially in terms of waterproof performance. Due to the fact that smart lamp posts are outdoor products that are exposed to sunlight or heavy rain for a long time, and may even be submerged in water, there are high requirements for the working width and waterproof performance of the lamp post's cabin and electronic communication components. Based on actual visits, we found that some smart light poles actually use household grade switches and fiber optic transceivers, which have no waterproof ability and no guarantee of reliability and durability. At the same time, market research also found that the smart light pole project on a certain road had 15% failure and damage in less than a year of operation, mainly due to two reasons: ① poor high temperature resistance, ② waterproof performance not meeting IP67 standards. The lamp post can easily reach a high temperature of 80 degrees Celsius under the scorching summer sun. If the working temperature of electronic communication equipment does not meet the standard, it is easy to crash or shut down; However, issues such as flooding and condensation inside the cabin require that the electronic communication equipment inside the lamp post must have a certain degree of waterproofing, reaching IP67, in order to resolve these problems. Therefore, when designing and selecting components for outdoor ground applications such as smart light poles, it is necessary to systematically consider pain points such as flooding, water leakage, condensation, humidity, high temperature, and severe cold in order to avoid the appearance of non durable black technology. This is currently a challenge for smart light poles to be handed over to various integrators and equipment manufacturers.

In response to the specific requirements for the reliability and waterproof performance of smart lamp posts, Shenzhen Xiayu Technology Co., Ltd. has specially launched a series of waterproof industrial switches and waterproof smart gateways for smart lamp posts. Its products exceed the IP67 standard and can work continuously for 7 days under 1.5 meters of water. They also support wide temperature operation from -40 to 85 degrees Celsius, self-healing ring network, serial port RS485/232, PoE, SNMP, etc., completely solving the pain points of water flooding, water leakage, condensation, humidity, high temperature, and severe cold of smart lamp posts. They have been applied to smart lamp post projects in cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and free trials are also provided to customers.

In summary, for the huge market of over 100 billion yuan of smart light poles in China every year, we hope that domestic equipment manufacturers and integrators can continue to create more high-quality supporting electronic communication equipment for smart light poles, develop more valuable application scenarios, tap and use the gold mines of information and digital technology, and open up an operable and sustainable business model in the Internet of Things, the Internet of Vehicles, and the Internet of People, jointly building this round of information and digital technology powerhouse!