Philips street lighting management system to use Vodafone’s M2M platform
Vodafone and Philips Lighting signed an agreement for the provisioning of connected lighting and smart city services. Under terms of the deal, the two companies will enable city authorities worldwide to implement wirelessly connected street lighting systems designed to save energy and ease maintenance.
The Philips CityTouch street lighting management system will implement Vodafone’s machine-to-machine network to connect individual light points. Every connected street lamp will contain a Vodafone M2M SIM. The program is said to allow city authorities to monitor and manage lighting through the Philips CityTouch system while engineers will be able to check performance, identify faults and control lighting remotely.
The two firms said the infrastructure will be able to support additional smart city applications in the future.
“We are at the start of a new era which will see highly energy efficient connected street lighting become the backbone of most smart cities,” said Bill Bien, SVP and head of strategy and marketing at Philips Lighting. “Robust, reliable wireless connectivity will help make this happen, linking streetlights with sensors, devices and management systems,”
Huawei unveils Openlab in Munich
In related news, Huawei unveiled its first Openlab in Munich, Germany, which the vendor said will focus on different areas, including “Internet of Things,” cloud computing and big data to build safer and smarter cities.
To date, more than 25 partners including T-Systems, SAP, Intel, Alstom and Hexagon have expressed an interest in participating in the new Openlab.
“With the launch of Munich Openlab, we hope to expand the collaboration between the two companies to accelerate the delivery of joint solutions for enterprises,” said Rinse Tamsma, head of global partner organization for Middle & Eastern Europe Region at SAP.
Huawei said the Openlab will act as an incubation center for joint collaboration on industry solutions with software and industry partners to build an industry ecosystem. Huawei said it has established 10 interconnected Openlabs across the globe.
