June 14, 2017 
6 Comments 
You may have noticed the Smart Pole popping up around Australia, but what exactly does it provide and how is it making your life safer and easier?
Smart Poles can be optimised to do many different jobs. The poles installed at Darling Harbour in Sydney provide CCTV security for safety and traffic analysis, free wifi connectivity, a speaker system for announcements and remote-controlled, colour-changing signals featuring dimmable energy-saving LED lights.
The installations are already happening in NSW, SA and QLD. The largest collection of Smart Poles so far is emerging in Newcastle, with 50 of them being erected around the inner city, and a further 300 due over the next few years.
“Our poles are a modular system that can be easily adapted to different requirements and incorporate the latest communication and energy-saving lighting technologies,” said Newcastle City Council Interim chief executive Jeremy Bath. “All the lighting can be controlled on a desktop with Google Maps and you can dim them in the middle of the night to save energy. We’ll be able to add environmental sensors, smart parking systems and electric-vehicle charging stations later on.”
What do you think? Will you feel safer knowing Smart Poles are installed in your city to provide a safer environment and to alert you to any imminent dangers?
Read more at msn.com.au
The Conversation
YourLifeChoices Writers
Will Brodie
Liv Gardiner
Ben Hocking
Sounds to me like another revenue raising idea put forward by some advertising company providing advertising flags on each pole
Try reading the article rather than just looking at an unrelated photo. There poles are an excellent innovation.
Standard lamposts are already used for that purpose – advertising community events mostly – so what is the difference? Assuming you are correct which you may not be Lockey.
Suits me just fine – SOME people will modify their antisocial intent if they’re aware that their actions are recordable. If I’m not intending harm to anyone or anything, I’m legally protected by vision of my actions. Sadly, tragically, the world in big cities has moved on from former rights to community privacy because certain individuals simply won’t behave civilly in social settings. We need protection from each other! What a shame.
Great idea, anything to keep us more safe, or at least have footage of those who don’t behave. Sadly we need this thing more and more.
guess we’ll have to give them a try first, then review them