The use of high-frequency millimeter waves enables fast 5G data transmission with limited transmission distance. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a high-density base station to achieve sufficient coverage. At this time, it is the LED intelligent street lamp---the essential lamp for the smart city, which has attracted people's attention. They are evenly distributed at high density in all major cities and are suitable for deploying 5G and the Internet of Things.
Streetlights are deployed at intervals of 20-30 meters, while the spacing between 5G base stations is 100-200 meters, which means that there is great flexibility in installing 5G base station equipment on the lamp post. Equally important, streetlights are owned by local governments, making it easier for 5G telecom operators to negotiate such installations.
Taipei, Taiwan plans to replace 12,600 street lights in five regions with smart LED street lights in 2019 and complete the replacement of more than 110,000 street lights in the city within three years.
China's goal is to launch 5G commercial operations by 2020. Local governments, especially the eastern and southern regions of China, are actively building 5G networks in designated areas through the establishment of smart LED street lights. In January 2019, there were at least 10 intelligent LED street lamp procurement projects in China.
However, it is very difficult to install smart LED street lights on a large scale in a short period of time because the hardware and software costs of these lamps are very high. Installing about 240,000 smart LED street lights with multiple sensing systems in Shenzhen is estimated to cost 50 billion RMB ($7.46 billion).
Costly 5G smart city solution
In fact, 4G LTE technology equipped with NB-IoT network can also be used for environmental and traffic monitoring, security monitoring and public information display through intelligent LED street lights, and the advantage of using the 5G network is faster image transmission.
The development of a smart city may not necessarily depend on the development of 5G. However, 5G will replace 4G sooner or later, so governments that want to implement smart cities need to find a way to achieve their goals based on 5G technology.
It may be economically feasible to deploy smart LED street lights based on 5G connections via PPP (Public Private Partnership) or PFI (Private Finance Program). In either case, the private partner should be a large, well-funded company that can use the source of income as the initial one-time return on investment and can continue for a long time.
