Ericsson and Philips are teaming up to provide unique LED lighting for municipalities that includes a tiny mobile base station to improve wireless data coverage. It’s quite a novel and original idea

There are strong arguments for making street lights LED and smart. By switching from traditional sodium street lights you’ll save about 50 percent in energy but if you make the lighting smart, you’re looking at closer to 80 percent since on low traffic streets you can use sensor technology to power down if needed. On the mobile base station side, street lamps are elevated and provide the opportunity for mobile carriers to provide data to customers at hundreds of access points.

LED lighting costs remain high but Ericsson is talking about offering lighting-as-a-service which allows municipalities to avoid hefty up front capital costs while hardware sellers use back end financing and contracts to ensure recurring revenue. We’ve seen how successful solar leases have been in greasing uptake of rooftop solar and it’s the same principal. You pay for the power rather than for the hardware. This allows the customer to see an immediate monthly cost savings.

The question remains: what’s the value to municipalities of pairing a mobile access point with LED? Well for municipalities it’s a prospective revenue stream since they could turn around and charge the carriers for access. And carriers are eager to provide more dense networks. Sounds pretty, good, right? Now to the execution.