Wireless Street Lamps for Traffic Monitoring

RMH101 writes "The Register has a story about a UK initiative to create a country-wide wireless data network using street lamps. It's come to pass through a government initiative to monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere. The company involved, Last Mile, are proposing an intelligent mesh of smart street lamps embedded with storage and wireless networking to create 200MBit network access across the UK, including remote areas not reachable by conventional broadband. Work is due to start this year."

The UK: WTF?

[molafson]

The UK has always been the frontrunner for the "First To Develop Oppressive Panopticon" raspberry award. The network of public CC cameras there is mind-boggling.

Re:Wrong topic methinks..

[Doctor7]

That's not what the initiative is about, it's to allow your car to track [i]itself[/i] and other nearby vehicles, as the first step towards self-driving vehicles. Whether that's how it ends up being used, or whether it happens at all, is yet to be seen.

Big Brother

[Ilex]

monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere

The UK gov has an obsession with monitoring it's citizens. London already has more CCTV than any other capital. On average you're court on camera 300 times a day.

I expect their excuse is to improve road safety. The real reason is so they can issue more speeding tickets and increase the number of tolls.

The UK Motorist already pays 3 taxes to use the roads. Duty at the gas pump, Road Tax and tolls to use public roads in the form of the London congestion charge.

Moderators, that's not funny.

[holygoat]

It's really not - the UK has the highest incidence of CCTV cameras in the world.

Re:It's official

[DAldredge]

The british goverment is working on plans to charge people for every mile the drive. For such a scheme to work they would have to be able to track each vehicle individualy. You are wrong, the british goverment IS working on such a system. Their have even be a few /. articles on it.

Re:vandalism just got a lot more fun for criminals

[Malc]

This is the UK: they don't have transformers hanging on poles outside their homes like in N. America. Most cables are buried. N. American streets seem very cluttered to the eyes of a Briton due to the number of poles and cables everywhere, especially in more urban areas (like the street I live on in Toronto). I do remember seeing British Telecom boxes around, and hearing stories of phreakers taking advantage of them.

The UK seems to be filled with obnoxious youths intent on damaging everything. Get a new car: expect somebody to run their key along it. Put something nice outside your house: expect it to be stolen, vandalised, or pissed on. I remember being an arsehole at the age of 18: running pissed through people's daffodils kicking them everywhere, or running car dealerships over each car to set the alarm off. We used to come out of the pub and have pissing competitions on the windows of the glass office block (Equitable Life headquaters) across the road. And I wasn't a real arsehole compared with a lot of people I knew or saw.

Most of this behaviour just doesn't seem to happen in N. America, or at least here in Canada. Thank goodness.

Re:Putting expensive equipment

[strictnein]

Are you suggesting that people are going to start snapping these puppies off to steal the wireless routers

No, when a car hits them (which happens on a semi-frequent basis in any major metropolitan area). They're made to snap off to decrease the damage done to the car and occupants. They're also easier to repair if they snap completely off then if they would just bend when hit.
Next time you walk by one, take a little bit closer look at it. They're typically connected to the base by 4 large bolts usually with some type of cushioning, semi-plyable material in between. When a car hits it the four bolts snap and the pole falls over, typically breaking just the bolts and the light and causing minimal damage to the vehicle. To repair it they simply replace the light and the four bolts.

Plus only the antenna would need to be on the streetlight itself, the rest could be buried underground.

That wouldn't make too much sense and would be much more expensive/time consuming to install and repair. You don't see a lot of burried phone boxes. But who knows, this is the government.

Just create lots of interference

[yabos]

If it's using 802.11b then it'd be easy to amp the hell out of an AP, install a 12VDC to 120VAC converter in your car and screw with the nearest tracking device.

Adelaide already using street lights for wireless

[bonnyman]

Adelaide, Australia is already using its' street light infrastructure to support a municipal wireless network ("citilan") in the central business district:

Community Broadband Networks:
"City of Adelaide to offer wireless broadband downtown" [blogspot.com]

MuniWireless.com:
"Adelaide hotzone is up and running" [muniwireless.com]

Re:yay brits!

[Alioth]

No, street lamps in Britain are street lamps. They vary in size, but the common feature of a street lamp is they generally don't carry telephone wiring. A telephone pole in Britain is...erm...a wooden pole with phone lines on it and no light (although the telcos are generally burying increasing quantities of telephone lines).

A picture of a typical suburban street lamp in Britain is here [leics.gov.uk] and one on a bigger, main road is here [huntsdc.gov.uk]. Note the complete absence of telephone lines.

Re:yay brits!

[matthew.thompson]

Er - we don't run telephone across poles everywhere.

We definately don't run telephone poles along the route of major motorways.

Since there's already power to a streetlamp it's probably much cheaper to make each one a member of a wireless mesh network than it is to put lots more cable in ductwork under the road and pull it up through the streetlamp.

satellite is not expensive

[DrSkwid]

19.99 a month for 256k [silvermead.net] 59.99 for 2Mb

if you have SkyTV it won't cost you the 200 ish installation for a SkyDish

I'm told the latency is quite high so don't expect to play quake

http://www.silvermead.net/satellite

Re:It's official

[glesga_kiss]

However, if I march around in the street, destroying other peoples' property (and, in general, preventing other people from going about their daily lives), you can be damned sure the cops will come and break up the party.

Not quite. If you turn up at a peacefull protest with an anti-Bush slogan, you will get asked to move to a "Free speach zone". No shitting here, google for it. Pro-Bush slogans don't get moved. If you refuse to move to the area (which is out of sight from Bush, the public and TV cameras) you WILL get arrested by the Secret Service.

All to counter terrorism you see. Of course, no terrorist would ever consider using a pro-Bush banner to get closer, no sirrriee!

Sure, it's hardly a facist police state, but it's not the USA we used to respect. And sadly, it seems to get worse with every passing year.