California City Converts Its Street Lights Into A High-Speed IoT Backbone (backchannel.com) 61
Harvard Law professor Susan Crawford describes how the city of Santa Monica installed its own high-speed IoT backbone on its street lights and traffic signals -- and why it's important.
Neutral "micro" cell sites can make very high-capacity wireless transmissions available, competitively, to everyone (and every sensor) nearby. This can and should cause an explosion of options and new opportunities for economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing in general... Very few American cities have carried out this transmogrification, but every single one will need to. Santa Monica...is a city that will be able to control its future digital destiny, because it is taking a comprehensive, competition-forcing approach to the transmission of data...
Cities that get control of their streetlights and connect them to municipally overseen, reasonably priced dark fiber can chart their own Internet of Things futures, rather than leave their destinies in the hands of vendors whose priorities are driven (rationally) by the desire to control whole markets and keep share prices and dividends high rather than provide public benefits.
Santa Monica's CIO warns that now telecoms "are looking for exclusive rights to poles and saying they can't co-locate [with their competitors]. They're all hiring firms to lock up their permits and rights to as many poles as possible, as quickly as possible, before governments can organize."
Cities that get control of their streetlights and connect them to municipally overseen, reasonably priced dark fiber can chart their own Internet of Things futures, rather than leave their destinies in the hands of vendors whose priorities are driven (rationally) by the desire to control whole markets and keep share prices and dividends high rather than provide public benefits.
Santa Monica's CIO warns that now telecoms "are looking for exclusive rights to poles and saying they can't co-locate [with their competitors]. They're all hiring firms to lock up their permits and rights to as many poles as possible, as quickly as possible, before governments can organize."
Rational? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop saying that maximizing profits at all costs is the only rational approach to business?
It's a rather new idea that's been pushed by the financial and legal worlds for the last 40 years (because, surprise surprise, it lets them maximize profits on their advisory services), but is by no means the only valid metric for measuring business success. Focusing solely on profits oversimplifies the role of business in complex markets. This single minded focus ultimately leads to monopolies providing expensive, crappy products (which is exactly what Santa Monica is trying to avoid here).
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Re:Rational? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but sometimes operating at less than maximal efficiency in order to allow other sections of the economy to flourish as well is the better LONG TERM option.
Sadly, anything that isn't an increase in profits every single quarter means the world is ending.
Nice strawman, though. Just remember that there are nuances between "Operate at a loss" and "Earn ALL THE MONIES!"
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No, but sometimes operating at less than maximal efficiency in order to allow other sections of the economy to flourish as well is the better LONG TERM option.
So that would be maximizing (long term) profits then. Hmmm how about that.
Maybe your business, not mine. State Farm minimize (Score:5, Interesting)
> It's the reason the business exists.
Speak for yourself. I've founded and owned several businesses over the last 30 years, and none have existed solely or primarily for the purpose of profit to the business. Maybe that's how YOU do business, but not the rest of us.
My last business was *started* in order to solve a specific pair of problems for customers and the industry as a whole, because existing solutions weren't working and it was a pain in the butt for day job. Actually, it turned my day job into a night job - having to be up in the middle of the night dealing with servers overloaded by attacks. So basically it was started to prevent problems that made my day-to-day work painful. It was then spun off as a separate corporation for the purpose of providing continued employment to existing employees when the main business was sold. That is, to provide employment for a couple of years until another company could be launched around another product. Because it's first purpose as a corporation was to provide a steady paycheck for loyal employees, when one employee got depressed and stopped showing up to work we continued to pay her for six months - making sure people had a steady income was the purpose of that company existing, after all. Later I gave that company to another employee, most of it anyway.
> Are you suggesting it would somehow be in the interests of the business to minimize profits, or operate at a loss and go out of business?
Yes, companies such as State Farm and Nationwide insurance minimize profits. Any profit not required for new investment is refunded to customers. Their purpose is to provide the best possible insurance value to customers.
Most, though not all, businesses have a continuing purpose, so indeed they try not to go out of business. Some have a limited-time purpose, but not most. So they try to avoid net long-term losses that would put them out of businesses. That's very different from maximizing profit. A great many strive for profit near zero other than paying off debt and a capital expenditures fund. I've been on the board of directors of such.
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Non profits minimize profit by paying their big cheeses all their profits. It's not the same as a for profit business, but more like them than different.
'State Farm' is not a good example to use, they are as bad as insurance companies get in terms of fucking their customers every chance they get. Citing them is like citing 'The United Way' as an example of a good charity. Makes me think you're living in a different universe.
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Never filed a claim? Otherwise you'd know better.
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Both times I filed claims with State Farm the work was done within 6 days. One time vandalism on my car, the other when I was involved in a hit and run, and the entire ass end of my car was totaled(sadly it's hard to catch people with no plates). GP would have been better off using something like Green Shield which operates as a non-profit insurance company.
very interesting .Non-profit customer-owned is wor (Score:2)
> 'State Farm' is not a good example to use, they are as bad as insurance companies get in terms of fucking their customers every chance they get.
That's very interesting. The non-profit cooperative is much worse than all of the companies that have a profit motive to compete on service. Does recognizing that fact completely ruin your entire world view?
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Long term prospects and stability are also perfectly valid business goals.It may make sense for a short term investor if you double profiots now at the costy of flaming out next year, but it doesn't make sense for the business itself.
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What Can Go Wrong? (Score:3)
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Puts another, ahem, light on the old 'blinky' tag.
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Why don't we just push this back by 2000 years:
Roads: what can go wrong?
Horse carriages, the getaway vehicle choice!
This is just infrastructure nothing more.
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I fail to see a valid argument there...
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Since when does infrastructure have anything to do with device security?
Or were you trying to be funny? What can go wrong? Absolutely nothing.
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This is just infrastructure nothing more.
If you don't know how the IoT infrastructure differs from roads and horse carriages, you really have no business being on a tech site. This has the potential to do serious damage to the very infrastructure it's connected to, not to mention the privacy and security of anyone within range.
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Don't know what Santa Monica is building, but "IoT infrastructure" is very different from "consumer IoT". We're not talking about Mom's baby camera here; we're talking about FedEx's truck tracking devices and the like. Businesses don't tend to be quite so careless.
I hope.
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Uh-huh. How many warnings in the last 3 years have we had about machine controllers and PLC's being directly connected to the internet and how it's a really stupid thing to do that. Because they control everything from electrical grids to management of the water supply(including chemical treatment control) to sewer maintenance control.
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This has the potential to do serious damage to the very infrastructure it's connected to
A wise man once said (cherry picked): "If you don't know how the IoT infrastructure differs IoT, you really have no business being on a tech site."
So what are you doing here?
On a more serious note, no, no it doesn't. No more that the internet can't do damage to another internet. Please stop confusing individual devices with infrastructure.
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This is more like the Formula One cars of the late 1960s. 300 HP engines and drum brakes on a set of wheels fit for a bicycle, attached to a flimsy steel-tube frame, what could possibly go wrong?
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I'm looking forward to hackers causing city level gridlock by playing with light timing. Or just turning them all red forever.
Not everything needs to be connected to a network.
Manager Alert!! (Score:1)
Santa Monica...is a city that will be able to control its future digital destiny, because it is taking a comprehensive, competition-forcing approach to the transmission of data...
Aren't they supposed to use the word synergy in there somewhere?
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Every time I hear "synergy" or have to sit through a bullshit bingo talk, I can't help but think of this [youtube.com].
I have actually been to speeches that sound like someone just read those lyrics word by word.
stehlin har prohfets (Score:2)
ATT haven't blocked this yet? They're losing their touch.
hyperbole (Score:3)
This can and should cause an explosion of options and new opportunities for economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing in general.
Really?
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Yes really. A city wide LoRa network creates a whole new world of options that previously had a high cost due to requiring dedicated infrastructure and often licensing of bandwidth.
America is just behind the times, the Netherlands got covered early this year and there are people basically queuing up to use it for new applications.
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Going to? Already using you mean. Everything from environmental sensors measuring emissions especially around the Europoort area, depth sounding, managing waterways, the NS is connecting the old manual railway track changing thingies (i'm sure they have a technical name) back to their system. My company is investigating using these sensors to provide a third party continuous monitoring ability on critical infrastructure. A trial in Amsterdam has put noise sensors around the city so they can quickly determin
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Maybe. I work in this area, and there is potential for a lot of new products once you have a widely available, low power network.
For example, my company makes a device that can detect and then localize leaks in water pipes. When there is a leak, it communicates back to HQ over cellular networks, the same way a smartphone does. Those networks are expensive, coverage is patchy for IoT because a lot of it is under manhole covers or deep inside buildings, and the cellular modems really chew batteries. Deploymen
Best use of Eminent Domain (Score:2)
Municipalities should seize every telephone pole and lamppost for the public good.
Right. (Score:2)
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You're going to be waiting a long time. The name may change, but networked devices have been here for a long time, and they're not going anywhere.
Someone in marketing just made a new buzzword, that's all.
Council should know (Score:1)
Councils should know by now that communication is a basic service and unsuitable for a government-backed monopoly. Any Councillor who supports selling rights to a basic service should be sacked.
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