Ubicquia solutions transform streetlights into broadband networks to support myriad uses

Florida-based Ubicquia this week announced that it has added the Ubimetro small-cell product to its portfolio of versatile streetlight-based broadband-routing solutions and that it has become a new member of the AT&T Smart Cities Strategic Alliance.

Ubicquia is best known in the wireless industry for its Ubicell router, which is a “Dixie-cup” sized unit that can be plugged into the NEMA electrical socket that traditionally has been used to support the photocell atop a standard streetlight, according to Ubicquia CEO Ian Aaron. Sold at a price comparable to a typical streetlight controller, the Ubicell supports advanced light control and includes wireless connectivity that enables mesh networking and the opportunity to add modules for myriad types of broadband-wireless connectivity.

“You can’t have a smart city without being a connected city,” Aaron said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “When you plug in a Ubicell, our unit has mesh, Wi-Fi. Bluetooth and Bluetooth beaconing in the base unit. So, if you want to connect an air-quality sensor via Wi-Fi, or if you want to connect a Wi-Fi camera, we’ve designed it to help cities connect third-party devices very easily.

“On our standard unit, you can have real-time analysis of the way your poles are moving in the winds—or if they’ve tilted because of a storm. So, they have the ability to manage their infrastructure without having to roll trucks out on the streets.”

During the last nine months, Ubicquia has deployed solutions with municipalities and wireless carriers in the U.S., Mexico, South America, Italy and Kazakhstan, and “the response has been great,” Aaron said.

“This is one of things we’ve seen: IoT and smart cities have been in pilots for the past five years,” he said. “The way we’ve designed our products, we’re trying to take it out of the pilot phase and allow people—at a low cost and at high density—to be able to now start deploying these services more broadly.

Ubicquia also is developing a versatile portfolio of small modular units for the Ubicell that provide many kinds of wireless connectivity that can be customized to meet the needs of a municipality or commercial network operator, Aaron said.

“Our unit also has a little plug-in module, so at a very low cost—a fraction of the cost of Ruckus and Cisco—you can put in a plug-in module and turn every single streetlight into a Qualcomm-based 802.11ac Wi-Fi access point,” Aaron said. “So, for cities that want to do things like public Wi-Fi, they can do it at a fraction of the cost and literally have it be plug and play, versus having to get attachment rights, get power to the devices and deal with backhaul. [With Ubicell,] they can do it in a much more efficient and elegant way.”