http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e624a7e4-5b59-11da-
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Lamp posts are leap from dark
By Mike Butcher
Published: November 22 2005 18:36 | Last updated: November 22 2005 18:36
Imagine a city where every lamp post provided wireless internet
access, solar-powered street lighting and a power point to charge
your mobile phone. You might expect to find this in a sophisticated
western city – but it will actually appear first in Africa.
Starsight (Starsightproject.com) is a project designed to supercharge
street lighting and power in developing counties. Essentially it is a
network of pylons, each with a solar panel, linked not by cables but
by antennae which use wireless internet protocol.
The Starsight idea came out of the involvement of London-based
sustainable development specialist the Kolam Partnership in an urban
street lighting initiative in Cameroon.
Reliable street lighting can help a country to develop – a study by
the Kenyan government recently found that street lighting reduced
crime by 65 per cent. The benefits are even more widespread – aid
workers and foreign businesses are more likely to stay on in a
country if they feel secure.
But the Cameroon project needed to be able to turn the street
lighting on and off remotely without hard-wired connections.
Putting a mobile phone into every pylon was impractical so Kolam
brought in UK mobile expert Steve Flaherty.
He came up with the idea of employing wireless internet, or WiFi. “It
meant we could not only monitor the pylons remotely but provide
blanket broadband internet access,” he says.
A Starsight pylon can use a WiFi or WiMax (long-range wireless
internet) and be connected to almost any kind of peripheral.
A street light is the first choice, but it could be a Tsunami warning
siren system, a CCTV camera or a pollution monitor.
It could even provide a power outlet at its base, to power a
conventional phone or one using Voice-over-IP.
And that power socket has more spin-offs. One study puts the number
of night-time street vendors at 40m across Africa – and almost all of
them use paraffin lamps. a power outlet at the base of a Starsight
pylon could resell power to these vendors – which they could use to
light, to cook or to charge mobile phones.
That could cut carbon emissions for the continent, according to Mr
Flaherty.
At this point it became clear that Starsight was not going to be just
any old street lighting system. Africa is swinging towards mass
urbanisation as people flee a war-torn or starving countryside, and
infrastructure is increasingly important.
A technology to roll out green energy street lighting along with
telecommunications and power could well be the great leap forward for
which Africa is looking.
Yannick Gaillac, founding partner of the Kolam Partnership, is
enthusiastic: “This project will definitely change lives for the
poorest people in the world and that’s what I wanted to do. We didn’t
invent these basic technologies, but we are gathering them together
in one solution.”
Aside from its infrastructure aspect, Starsight will have also have
an educational spin-off.
A planned series of internet cafes will run along the 200 pylon
network in Douala, providing training courses to educate local people
in basic information technology skills, using the wireless internet
access provided by the pylons.
The potential benefits do not stop there. Starsight costs about the
same as a normal street lighting system to install but no underground
copper cabling – which anyway is often stolen – is needed and
wireless telecommunications and electric power is thrown in.
Official backers of the project, other than the Cameroon government,
so far include the Commonwealth Business Council and the British
government.
Starsight is is a 50-50 joint partnership between the Kolam
Partnership and Singapore wireless firm based Next-G, which will make
the pylons.
Starsight is one of the latest in a widening field of green energy
projects by developed world companies, incentivised by the market
created by carbon trading under the Kyoto protocol.
There are also Corporate Social Responsibility points to be won from
ethical mutual funds.
If the Cameroon test is successful, Morocco, China and India could be
next on the cards for Starsight – and even European outposts like the
Scottish Highlands.
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