Verizon’s acquisition of Sensity Systems, a “smart lighting” provider, might be called a way to add to the range of smart city solutions supported on the ThingSpace platform (Verizon’s IoT app developer platform).
Sensity supplies “smart lighting” applications that might initially be thought of as providing a “save energy” or “improve operations” value proposition.
But there could be another angle. Some believe light posts are a logical place to put small cell radios. By definition, there is a mast, power and dense spacing suitable for a small cell network.
That might allow Verizon to leverage a smart lighting service business model with additional revenue streams. In addition to supporting small cell sites and smart lighting, smart parking communications or other smart cities apps could communicate with the small cell.
If Verizon’s Qualcomm-supported ThingSpace protocols also are embedded at the chip level, the standard mobile network could provide a low-cost communications capability.
Fiber to the street light might be needed for small cell backhaul, so there would be plenty of bandwidth available at each supported small cell light pole.
Historically, the cost to connect remote sensors (now considered part of the Internet of Things) to a 4G mobile network has been higher than linking using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zwave or ZigBee.
Verizon believes it can close much of that gap by directly embedding Qualcomm Technologies by embedding the ThingSpace IoT functions directly on Qualcomm chips used for communications.
ThingSpace is Verizon’s global IoT app development platform, and will be embedded on the Qualcomm Technologies’ MDM9206 Category M (Cat M1) LTE modems, lowering the cost of activating ThingSpace IoT communications functions.
The embedded ThingSpace IoT platform will be available for OEM integration in early 2017, Qualcomm says.
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