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Posted May 24, 2012, 10:10 PM
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‘V-Pole’ may take high tech to the streets in Vancouver
From the National Post.
I'm not sure if people really want cell transmitters closer to their heads or their condo windows - or whether the transmitters would also broadcast upwards to the tops of buildings.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05...-in-vancouver/
Quote:
Douglas Coupland-created ‘V-Pole’ may take high tech to the streets in Vancouver
Tristin Hopper May 22, 2012 – 10:52 PM ET | Last Updated: May 22, 2012 10:58 PM ET
Martin Tessler/Mathew Bulford
A photo illustration of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson with the V-Pole — a slim, modular utility pole that would connect to underground optical wiring.
To clear its streets of cellphone towers, parking meters, Wi-Fi terminals, streetlights and even community message boards, the city of Vancouver is pushing forward with a scheme to compress all the technologies together into specialized “Vancouver poles” planted throughout the city.
“Meet your inevitable future,” wrote novelist Douglas Coupland, the technology’s creator, in an introductory Tweet.
Alongside Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, the author unveiled the “V-Pole” concept technology last week at the New Cities Summit in Paris, France. “You would never think of building a house or office tower without electricity — in the same way, you would never think of developing future cities without ‘V-Poles,’” said Mr. Coupland in a statement quickly reprinted by French, German and Italian media.
The device, no larger than a telephone pole, would manage cell signals for multiple carriers, as well as wireless Internet for the surrounding neighbourhood. In-ground pads plugged into the pole would provide inductive charging for parked electric cars. An integrated touch screen would display maps, ads or payment interfaces, and an LED street light would be perched at the top of the pole.
“You could pay for parking, you could pay for electric vehicle charging, that kind of thing,” said Sahdu Johnston, Vancouver’s Deputy City Manager.
The core of the V-Pole is lightRadio, a device developed jointly by Bell Labs and telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent that compresses all the wires and circuit boards of a cellphone tower into a single Rubik’s cube-sized block. “You can stack them inside a pole like Lego,” said Mr. Coupland.
A friend of Mr. Robertson, Mr. Coupland said the idea came up a year ago when the pair were discussing city efforts to address an encroaching forest of cellphone towers. As of early 2012, Downtown Vancouver is home to more than 100 cellphone towers operated by more than five competing carriers.
“We’ve been seeing an almost exponentially growing demand for data,” said Mr. Johnston. “So, we’ve been trying to find a way to integrate cell phone infrastructure into the urban landscape in a way that does not detract from the aesthetic and view qualities of the city.”
As wireless traffic climbs — and infrastructure expands in response — Mr. Coupland predicts that poorly-managed cities could become “as cluttered as a kitchen junk drawer.” “I like to get rid of as much crap as possible from the visual environment,” he said.
It would not be the first time cities have been swamped by telecommunications clutter. One of Thomas Edison’s earliest inventions was the Quadruplex Telegraph, a device that allowed simultaneous messages to be transmitted along a single telegraph wire. Prior to the invention – in the mid 1800s – every single telegraph operator needed their own cable, resulting in dense urban jungles of telegraph wires that came close to blocking out the sun.
“It’s getting to the point in most dense metropolitan areas where [traditional cell towers] cannot provide adequate capacity — especially with the advent of smartphones and tablets,” said Richard Hamilton, a vice-president with Alcatel-Lucent. “So, what we need to do is go to smaller cells, so there’s less people in each cell trying to access the same spectrum.”
The lightRadio technology is so compact that the cubes could just as easily be hidden under the eaves of a nearby house. Putting the technology in a pole is about making a “statement,” said Mr. Coupland. “Data transmission is no longer something scary you don’t want in your backyard. Now you want it directly in front of your house,” reads a V-Pole news release. Nevertheless, the poles are bound to attract the ire of a small but vocal Lower Mainland community of anti-Wi-Fi and anti-cell tower activists. Last month, Vancouver city councillor Adriane Carr pushed forward a resolution that would allow Vancouverites to “opt out” from using Wi-Fi-enabled “smart” power meters.
‘It’s getting to the point in most dense metropolitan areas where [traditional cell towers] cannot provide adequate capacity’
The best-selling author of Generation X and Microserfs, Mr. Coupland also has a hefty résumé in public art. In 2008, Toronto unveiled Mr. Coupland’s abstract monument to the War of 1812: a larger-than-life gold coloured toy soldier done up in the regalia of the 1813 Royal Newfoundland Regiment standing over a toppled toy soldier dressed as an American infantryman. Mr. Coupland is also behind the Terry Fox memorial unveiled last September outside the refurbished B.C. Place stadium.
The V-Pole project is entirely open source, which means Mr. Coupland receives no royalties or consulting fees for the design. V-Poles, still in the conceptual stage, are all-white save for a band of multicoloured rings clustered near the top. Mr. Coupland sees the poles as being decked out in neighbourhood-specific colour schemes. “They are introducing a new era of communication and utility — so that’s why they’re a bit exuberant, I imagine in the future they’ll all be painted dull brown or something, but for now we should celebrate them,” said Mr. Coupland.
There is no way to estimate the unit cost per pole, but Mr. Hamilton pegs it in the “thousands” rather than the “tens of thousands.”
The new poles could cancel out some already-pricey infrastructure schemes. Last month, the province of B.C. pledged $2.74-million to install 570 electric car-charging stations, and Vancouver is already looking at plans to swap out some of its sodium street lights with LEDs.
National Post
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http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05...-in-vancouver/
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