We all know that we’re going to need a lot more urban cell sites to densify wireless networks for 5G. We also know that there tends to be a lamppost every 10-30 metres in a city. A significant proportion of the world’s lampposts are designed by Signify so TowerXchange spoke to the Manager of the Americas Icity Venture to find out how they are developing products and partnerships to facilitate and accelerate the deployment of Smart City infrastructure.
TowerXchange: Please introduce Signify to our readers.
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Signify, formerly Philips Lighting, is the world leader in lighting. We are known throughout for combining high quality, energy efficient LED lighting with cutting-edge technology to help city leaders transform how they operate, manage resources and improve services to their citizens. Our new name embraces the future of LED Lighting products, systems, and services. It reaffirms the powerful purpose of everything we do, to unlock the extraordinary potential of light for brighter lives and a better world.
TowerXchange: Who typically owns the site, the structures, and the rights to exploit those structures for provision of wireless connectivity?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
When we started out our model was to lease our poles to the cities of Los Angeles and San Jose: we owned the structures, we permitted and leased the sites. We have since sold those assets to the cities, but retained permission to work with MNOs in the provision of connectivity.
In North America our model now is to partner with multiple neutral providers utilising their expertise and leadership to deal with carriers and lease space on the sites. We bring our unique technical capabilities and manufacturing of advanced, custom smart poles, and as an example of this technology leadership we have developed a unique, award-winning multi-tenant pole. We share responsibility for maintaining excellent relationships with cities and municipalities.
So our business model varies from one market to the next, and because no two municipalities are the same.
In North America we work with numerous neutral host providers and or directly with the mobile network operators to develop and or deploy Smartpoles, but it is possible in other geographies we may choose different partners and different models – we’re open to any model which helps cities improve infrastructure for their citizens.
TowerXchange: We’ve all heard the hyperbole about the IoT and 5G requiring 10-100x as many cell sites to densify the network, but what products and partnerships are Signify developing to ready yourselves to play a role in unlocking the value of street lighting as a key enabler of smart cities?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
We need to start with what is driving the demand. The main driver is that society is changing and becoming a technology-driven data-oriented society. This new hyper-connectivity drives new lifestyle choices and preferences for individuals as employees, shoppers, residents, or students. Cities of the future need critical infrastructure to enable the flow of information and data. Digital infrastructure is as important to future growth as roads, bridges, and highways were in the past.
Signify has a long history of working with municipalities around the world. We have a thorough understanding of their needs related to delivering energy efficiency lighting, controls technology, and developing light pole solutions. We are now combining this knowledge to allow cities to maintain their identity and aesthetic appeal, while offering new services and systems to residents, businesses and visitors to enable a smart, connected city of the future.
We have the ability to approach municipalities with public-private partnerships. We are working with tower companies and other investors to explore new business models, while building on our existing relationships with utility companies, service providers, and contractors. By doing so, we can integrate our lighting control systems as one of the various verticals into a single smart city dashboard.
In terms of products and solutions, we develop telecommunication-enabled light poles for scalable, aesthetical, and hassle-free deployments. Furthermore, our connected lighting solutions enable applications beyond illumination. Think for example about asset tracking or smart parking applications through connected LED luminaires.
TowerXchange: What are the guiding principles for combining aesthetics and functionality of street furniture?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Cities are looking for a trusted advisor to deliver high quality products and services as street furniture evolves into functional elements of the modern city of tomorrow. Even though technology becomes ubiquitous, that does not mean that all sorts of communication equipment and antennas need to clutter up our urban environment. At Signify we pursue a vendor agnostic and open design with as little visual impact as possible through concealed solutions, as well as hassle-free maintenance for all potential tenants to allow for scalable deployment.
TowerXchange: Is there a trade-off between ease of maintenance and concealment?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
We understand that with the explosion in the number of cell sites required, continuing to attach equipment to the outside of existing poles is simply not scalable without cluttering the urban environment.
There are multiple trade-offs, for example locating telecom equipment at street level makes it easier for maintenance, but locating the equipment at height is better for RF performance.
Ultimately the key to theses trade-offs is ensuring that all stakeholders are happy – we have to meet the requirements of all stakeholders from municipalities and their citizens, to towercos seeking accessibility to ease maintenance, and MNOs who need to avoid interference in multi-tenant solutions.
TowerXchange: How can we ensure smart poles are quick and easy to deploy and maintain?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Acquiring and deploying individual sites, as is done with macro sites, will not scale for small cells. Instead, we at Signify believe that cluster permitting, where a municipality provides a concession for an entire area rather than site-by-site, will accelerate smart pole deployment.
When it comes to ease of maintenance, city planners must incorporate all future infrastructure requirements of smart city applications into their large-scale renovation projects already today. Some of these requirements include 24/7 availability of power for non-lighting applications, and availability of transmission capability such as fibre to at least the power cabinets, if not every single light pole.
TowerXchange: What is the optimal opportunity to switch out legacy street lighting for smart poles? And how long does it take to install smart poles?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Sometimes the timelines align such that we can replace legacy street lighting with LED with a single truck roll, but at other times these are on different schedules. For example, some advanced cities that have already converted to LED are only now looking at solutions for 4G/5G densification.
We might typically have to close a street for just one to two hours to replace existing street lights with smart poles.
TowerXchange: What is the typical service interval?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
The service interval depends on the functionality of the pole. A light pole has its own maintenance regime – all luminaires degrade over time, then there are reactive visits such as those caused by collision impacts. Telecom equipment has a different maintenance and technology lifecycle, so there is no single answer to defining the service interval for a smart pole.
TowerXchange: Cell sites have most usage and consume most power during the day. Street lighting comes on at night – how do we combine these simple facts to maximise the energy efficiency of smart poles? And in simple terms, what is the power source for smart poles, grid, battery, renewables or a combination?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
The transformation of street lighting systems from conventional to LED results in substantial energy savings for the city, while freeing up load capacity for the installation of additional devices on the existing street lighting grid. Smart poles are a good example. So essentially the city can support more applications on the same existing grid.
There are cases where the existing street lighting grid may be very old or not well maintained. This could limit the deployment of EV charging solutions without upgrading the power cables. In these cases, smart poles with integrated batteries and power devices for additional capacity next to IOT and connectivity solutions can play a crucial role in addressing these limitations.
TowerXchange: Should smart poles be designed to host one MNO or many?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
We believe there is a need for both single-tenant as well as multi-tenant pole designs. Especially as densification increases in the urban core, sharing the infrastructure among multiple MNOs makes a lot of economic and aesthetic sense. However, it is important to understand that MNOs are not the only parties interested in light poles for their small cells. The guiding principle here is that the smart pole needs to flexible and provide multiple layers of functionality. Cities will have various needs throughout all areas of the city to meet the demands of the residents. A smart pole deployment will have the greatest success if the pole can be designed to accept newer technologies as they continue to develop.
TowerXchange: What can you tell us about Signify’s partnership with American Tower?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Signify entered into an Alliance Agreement with American Tower in the U.S. to co-develop a dual tenancy smartpole with two fully integrated antenna solutions for the North American market. It’s a concealed solution that fits into the aesthetic of the modern urban environment. This will allow the mobile network operators to densify their 4G LTE networks.
Signify designed and manufactures the smartpole, neutral host operators leases up the sites to MNOs, and we share relationships and dialogues with municipalities – our organizations have complementary capabilities.
Signify designed and manufactures the smartpole, neutral host operators leases up the sites to MNOs, and we share relationships and dialogues with municipalities – our organizations have complementary capabilities
TowerXchange: What has been your progress to date in the partnership with American Tower and with similar initiatives?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Our partnership with American Tower is confined to the North American market so far, but we hope to leverage that partnership to build a relationship with American Tower’s international businesses.
We launched the dual tenancy smartpole with American Tower at MWC Americas in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The first commercial deployment is planned for Huntingdon Beach, where we’re in advanced stages of site selection and design.
Signify has had substantial smartpole deployments in Los Angeles and San Jose for several years.
TowerXchange: What else can and should a smart pole do besides provide lighting and wireless coverage?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Smart street light poles will evolve into the necessary infrastructure or backbone of the connected city of the future. These poles provide power, elevation, and location in order to allow wireless broadband technology to be delivered to relevant communities and user groups. Smartpoles will host various technologies such as IoT applications, Wi-Fi access points, fibre hubs, EV charging stations and USB charging stations. We are only limited by our imagination here!
TowerXchange: There are a lot of poles in the urban environment – is the vision that different poles will have different specialist functions, or that selected poles will combine all these applications?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
While multiple combinations can work in a single pole, there are physical, thermal and power limits. The likely result is that we combine some applications in one pole and some in another.
Street light poles are ubiquitous in dense urban areas, typically 10-30m apart, so we don’t have to cram everything into every pole.
TowerXchange: The potential for partnerships between Signify and towercos and MNOs is obvious, but how can you work together to bring the other critical stakeholder – the municipalities – to the table, and how can you work together to create win-win-win relationships?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Bringing municipalities to the table is one of the main benefits Signify will bring into any partnership with towercos and MNOs. Signify is already a very well-known company by many municipalities in countries across the globe for the quality of our products and services, next to the innovation we bring to the industry. The collaboration between towercos, MNOs and Signify will only accelerate the adoption of new technologies to address the current and future needs of communities and cities. These parties can work together to offer their innovation, finance, operations, design, and engineering capabilities to municipalities to achieve an all-around winning result for all the stakeholders involved.
TowerXchange: The fourth key stakeholder are owners of metropolitan and last mile fibre, whose participation is critical to enable backhaul from smart poles. Again, how can you create a win-win with the fibre network operators?
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Signify believes that the deployment of these types of newer technology is a win for all stakeholders, including fibre companies. Through an aesthetically pleasing deployment, the Signify smart pole portfolio provides a means for mobile network operators to achieve their goal of small cell densification. But small cell densification is not possible without fibre densification moving in lock step. For the fibre companies, the evolution towards 5G provides the drive for expansion of their existing network while providing a new revenue stream. When deployments are undertaken in a collaborative manner, all stakeholders in the ecosystem benefit. With such a diverse stakeholder network coming together, municipalities can play an enabling role by establishing simple, transparent and standard processes for permits and site acquisition.
TowerXchange: Finally, please sum up your vision of how towercos and MNOs can partner with Signify to play a critical role in Smart Cities.
Bill McShane, Director, Americas Icity Venture, Signify:
Signify can offer our products, solutions, and services globally thanks to our presence in more than 70 markets. We can address the specific needs of the entire stakeholder field thanks to our innovation capabilities in products and services. At Signify we are very excited about this opportunity, and we invite tower companies and MNOs to team up with us and collaboratively design clever ways to realise this tremendous Smart Cities opportunity.
