Snazzy All-in-One "Vancouver Poles" to Replace Ugly Urban Forest of Cell Towers and Cables

Can't possibly work - it's way too logical.

Maybe Vancouver can become a pioneer in electric cars.
It's to bad they won't be able to leave the city though until the rest of Canada and the US catch up -,-

This is a really snazzy design idea, and the lightRadio is an engineering proof of concept (i.e. proving that it's physically possible, not just a pretty drawing). I love it! My favorite part is that it means as long as you're close enough to a streetlamp, parking meter, or cell tower (which is 90% of the time in a city) you'll always be WiFi-connected. Maybe it would be a cool idea to include a simple 12V charging station in them as well? Just a few arm-height electrical outlets tapping into the pole's power supply as a service to people who find themselves away from home with a cell phone whose battery is dying quickly?

I can summarize my thoughts with this, though: please come to America and please become widely adopted around here before I'm too old to appreciate them anymore :) .

Hmm...I'm way too skeptical about this I'm sure, but there's a few glaring flaws with the concept that I can see right off the bat.

First of all, the picture is so Photoshopped it hurts. Whenever I see something like that it casts a definite shadow of a doubt on the article. I see that the National Post also used the same image, so no offense intended to PopSci, etc.

LED street lamps. Okay, not bad...but there's better and more efficient lights out there, isn't there? For that matter, why don't you strap a set of solar cells on the topside of that thing and make it self-sustaining?

A Wi-Fi hotspot and three carriers for cellphones. As I recall, if you're trying to feed a large area with wireless data access you need a tower that's more like say, 30.6 metres tall - not this little one that they're proposing. Sure the signal would likely be stronger than your average in-home router, but then you're thinking about building them in the middle of a swath of skyscrapers and big metal objects that will scatter the wavelengths. Not the best strategy, maybe.

Finally, I love the city of Vancouver and being a Canadian I always enjoy a visit to the place. But these days I remember the big hockey riots of 2011 and the damage those morons inflicted on the infrastructure. A colourful, shining pole that contains maybe a few hundred-thousand dollars of technology and fibre optic wiring...yeah, one drunken Canuck fan with a sledgehammer brings that tumbling down. I'm not saying DON'T build them, but I can forsee some serious financial nightmares in trying to maintain and replace them!

While I do share a couple of Charismatix 807's concerns, I think that the benefits of this would outweigh the costs. We (people, nation, world) need to think about moving ahead and progressing. This would be one of the smaller steps to achieving that goal, by making us more energy efficient and making communication much easier

Definitely need to add a solar panel as well. Probably won't be enough to power all the telecom in the pole, but enough for emergency communications in case of an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, or other major catastrophe.

I love this idea. No use making so many different poles when we can have an all-purpose utility pole. Can we just annex Vancouver? Please? I want it.

If these things work like they say it would be awesome.

Charismatix 807 I definatley share some of your concerns about them. That they are short I'm not sure that's a problem because if there are a lot of them they could just work like relays bouncing the signal along to the bigger antennas. So they could improve signal strength and coverage in the areas where the building's are blocking the signal. I think them being damaged could be a problem they need hardened and reinforced maybe a cage or something like that. As for the lights what do you think would be better than LED's they draw low power and run for thousands of yours there also more resistant to damage since there a solidstate unit. As for the solar good idea a power inverter and battery's would have to be added but there's no practical way it could be self sufficient the cellular and the Wi-Fi units use to much energy for that. I think for downtown areas these would be incredible if they work like repeaters they could fix so many dead and weak cellular signal areas caused by buildings and such. I wonder if cellular company's would help pay for the units it would look good for them people could use there phones more they could brag about having these areas covered really well. With good strong signals I think people would use data plans more often and the company's could really make money. All around I think the poles sound like a good idea as long as they change the name to something besides The V-Pole.

I dont look busy because I did it right the first time

I couldn't agree more with everyone mentioning solar cells....but then again, it's Vancouver, so chances of it being sunny are not good. Maybe they should have energy generating pads (which have been invented) and generate electricity by getting hit by raindrops, now that'd be more Vancouverite. Just sayin'.

It's not a tower, it's a "Keep-in-touch-tree".