Say goodbye to the huge, bulky, ugly mobile tower.
Say hello to the future of the 4g network.
Los Angeles announced on Thursday that in order to start improving mobile phone coverage, 100 street lamps are equipped with a network device called "small cells.
Street lights, known as smart poles, are part of a partnership between LED lighting giant Philips and telecom equipment giant Ericsson.
The two European companies announced in 2014 that they will work together to develop a small battery product, and Los Angeles is the first city to launch the technology.
Small cells are designed to increase network capacity in densely populated areas with high usage of mobile data-
The use of data will only continue to soar.
These small boxes are touted as the future of the film Network.
They are cheaper and faster to connect than large cellular base stations.
Major US wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon have been talking about their plans to launch small cells to improve their network performance, but deployment is slow at best.
AT&T, for example, dropped its target of launching 40,000 small cells by the end of 2015, saying that its 2014 acquisition of Leap Wireless was enough to increase coverage.
Nevertheless, according to ABI Research, the small cell market is expected to grow at a rate of 43% per year by 2020.
Philips and Ericsson hope that smart poles will make it easier for wireless operators to deploy small cells.
Operators can rent space on these street lights instead of going to personal Lords to try and convince them to install a box on the roof.
Embedding small cells directly into urban infrastructure can reduce visual clutter. -
Under the street lamp, the small battery equipment is completely concealed.
Christoph Herzig, who manages the Philips global strategic partnership, said: "A large number of new radio base stations need to be deployed . ".
"Our solution is to prepare for the tsunami.
It is difficult for cities to handle small cell deployment requests from operators.
Through our approach, we worked very early with the city to design the solution and agree on it with permission.
Ericsson and Philips began installing the 100 smart poles in October.
The project does not yet have any exact numbers on how they can improve the 4g signal, but "they are meeting or exceeding the expectations of wireless operators," Herzig said . ".
Herzig said that although the LA project started with only 100 street lamps, a total of more than 120,000 street lamps in the city are suitable for these small cells.
Choosing a new location includes finding out where the coverage is still uneven, and then Philips maps that location based on the streetlight database.
From there, wireless operators can rent space on street lights to install cell equipment in shopping centers.