The 146 sets of Smart Road lampposts in Dongcheng, Haidian, Tongzhou and other regions of Beijing were officially unveiled in the West Lake of Hangzhou... During this holiday, it seems that the street lampposts are also making every effort to present a gift to the Republic.
In addition to its beautiful shape, these smart road light poles also integrate light control, LED screen display, 5G base station, smart alarm and other functions, and make the road cleaner through "multi-pole integration", becoming a beautiful landscape in the city.
In fact, the Smart Road lamppost was piloted in many places as early as 2016, but it has not become a climate.
This year, with the promotion of the construction of 5G base stations and the launch of more than 30 policies around the country, smart road light poles in Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang and other places have sprung up at street intersections.
On August 8, Guangdong Province launched the first provincial industrial standard for the smart street lamp industry, which is undoubtedly a fateful event for the smart street lamp industry with intertwined interests and difficult landing.
According to relevant forecasts, China's smart road lamp pole market is expected to reach more than 30 billion this year and 100 billion in 2022.
What setbacks did the light pole industry of Smart Road encounter in the lost period of 2017-2018? What is the "magic pill" that will make it recover in 2019?
In the face of a huge market that may reach 100 billion yuan in 2022, how can new players across the field, such as communication giants, traditional lamp manufacturers and security enterprises, seize the market?
This time, can the capillaries of smart traffic, the beacon of smart road, grow rapidly, healthily and smoothly, and then connect the arteries of its entire smart city? This paper attempts to interpret these issues through investigation and interviews.
1、 2017-2018: The technology is mature, but the landing is blocked
From kerosene lamp to LED lamp, street lamp has gone through a long evolutionary history. With the development of Internet of Things technology, the upgrading of street lights has also shifted from the optimization of "lighting" effect to the "intelligence" of perception and control.
"Intelligent" means that the street lamp can "intelligently" complete the tasks of automatic switch, brightness adjustment, environmental monitoring and so on through its own perception, thus changing the high cost and low flexibility of wired manual control.
Compared with the traditional street light, the smart street light pole can not only illuminate the road for pedestrians and vehicles, but also serve as a base station to provide 5G network for citizens, can serve as the "eye" of smart security to maintain the safety of the social environment, and can carry LED screens to display the weather, road conditions, advertisements and other information to pedestrians.
▲ Intelligent road lamp pole integrates multiple functions
2016 is considered to be the first year of the landing of China's smart road lamp pole. At the beginning of the year, ZTE piloted the first Blue Pillar Smart Road lamppost in Shenzhen Industrial Park; In April, the Shaanxi Provincial Government, together with the Iron Tower Company and ZTE, piloted the smart light pole; In December, 20 "tall and high" composite street light poles made by Shanghai Sansi were unveiled in Zuoanmen West Street, Beijing... At that time, the news of the pilot of smart road light poles in various places formed a large earthquake nationwide.
The development of domestic smart light poles is almost synchronous with that of foreign countries. Since 2015, the American communication giant AT&T and General Electric have worked together to install cameras, microphones and sensors for 3200 street lights in San Diego, California, with the functions of finding parking spaces and detecting the sound of guns; Los Angeles introduced acoustic sensors and environmental noise monitoring sensors for street lamps to detect vehicle collision events and directly notify the emergency department; The municipal department of Copenhagen, Denmark, will install 20000 energy-saving street lamps equipped with smart chips on the streets of Copenhagen by the end of 2016
The technology of smart lamppost is relatively mature. In terms of function, the smart light pole has smart lighting, communication base station, micro-meteorological monitoring, video monitoring, Wi-Fi coverage, LED information display, public address, charging pile and other functional modules. At present, these functions of the smart road light pole can be customized according to the needs of the owner, and the goal of customization is no longer the stacking of functions, but the realization of platform linkage.
▲ Typical function module of smart light pole
In terms of the overall scheme, the smart road lighting pole scheme roughly involves four layers: perception layer, network layer, platform layer and application layer. The four levels work together. For example, when there is a local fire, the perception layer can quickly transmit the fire data to the platform layer through the network layer, so that the fire protection application layer can determine whether to give an alarm based on this.
▲ The system level of CIDE smart light pole
However, the rising smart street lamp pole suffered setbacks in 2017-2018, and the relevant landing progress was not heard for a while.
Wang Dongxu, Director of Energy MKT Program of ZTE Communications Co., Ltd., pointed out at that time: "Who will use it, who will build it, and who will operate it is a huge problem."
The cost of a single smart light pole is as high as 30000 to 80000 per pole, but the profit model is not clear, and the operation ownership authority is not clear. For example, there are no projects and models to be used for reference on such issues as "Will the communication operator or the urban construction party lead?".
In addition to operational issues, the issue of interest coordination is also very serious. The smart street light scheme involves different fields such as meteorology, transportation, urban construction, advertising management, and is under the management of different national institutions and departments. The communication and coordination between operators and different departments faces many challenges.
Dou Linping, Secretary-General of China Lighting Society, once pointed out that smart street lamps need strong background support to make a complete solution.
In addition, due to the "collective jamming" of the smart lamp pole promotion project, the industry norms and standards for reference have not appeared yet.
The light pole of the Smart Road, which galloped through the "Internet of Things" concept, just landed, and "met with a rebuff". It urgently needs a new impetus, a strong promoter and a set of norms and standards that can lead the industry.
These seem to fall from the sky in 2019.
2、 2019: 5G provides the power, and the policy guarantees the escort
In 2019, the rapid development of 5G brought hope to the light pole industry on the smart road. In April this year, the State issued the Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Construction and Sharing of Telecommunication Infrastructure in 2019, which proposed that "basic telecommunication enterprises and tower companies should be encouraged to make intensive use of existing base station sites, street light poles, monitoring poles and other public facilities, and reserve 5G site resources in advance."
Recently, smart street light poles with 5G base stations have been piloted in various regions of Beijing. As early as March of this year, a batch of new street lights on Tianhe South 2nd Road in Guangzhou have been put on the ground, integrating video monitoring, base stations, road signs, mobile phone charging interfaces and other elements.
▲ Smart Road light pole on Tianhe South 2nd Road in Guangzhou can charge mobile phones
Guangdong Province is at the forefront of the promotion of light poles on the Smart Road. On March 14, the Guangdong Smart Pole Industry Alliance, led by Guangdong Iron Tower, was officially established to provide support for the coordination work of the Smart Road Lightpole project after Guangdong Province. Subsequently, Shenzhen, Shaoguan, Huizhou and other places in Guangdong Province followed up the Smart Road Lightpole pilot.
In addition, news of the pilot smart street lampposts in other provinces also poured in. At the end of May this year, 60 smart street lamps were put into use in the construction of Zhongshan Road, Tong'an District, Xiamen, Fujian Province; According to the headquarters of the quality improvement work in the central city of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, 144 "smart towers" will be "on duty" at Sanyuan Road in the urban area before the end of September this year
The reporter further explored and found that in the past half a year, provinces and cities across the country have issued more than 30 relevant policies on smart road light poles, multi-purpose poles, 5G smart poles and towers.
▲ In the first half of 2019, some policies related to smart road lighting poles across the country
It is gratifying to note that recently, the first provincial "5G Smart Light Pole Standard" was also born. On August 8, Guangdong Province issued a 79-page Technical Specification for Smart Light Pole, which stipulates the design, construction, inspection and acceptance, operation and maintenance of smart light pole system.
The specification points out that the smart light pole is a multifunctional road light pole that takes the light pole as the carrier, provides intelligent lighting, mobile communication, urban monitoring, traffic management, information interaction and urban public services by mounting various kinds of equipment, and can provide remote monitoring, control, management and other network communication and information services through the operation management background system.
At present, the government's demand has changed greatly compared with the previous two years. In the past, enterprises recommended to the government the construction of smart road lamppost pilot project, but now the government has a relatively clear demand. The government defines the standard itself, and the enterprises allocate the project according to the volume of government funding.
Since then, the smart road lamppost has gained the new power of 5G, and the government has been a powerful driver to coordinate all parties through policies, and the first provincial smart lamppost standard in China has emerged to lead the way. This provides the conditions for solving the problems of "who will use, who will build, and who will operate" smart road lampposts.
According to the statistics of OFweek Industrial Research Institute, the construction scale of smart light poles in China reached 6500 in 2018, and the overall market scale is still small. However, with the continuous promotion of smart city construction and the promotion of the 5G commercialization wave, smart light poles, as a natural combination of 5G micro base stations, are expected to achieve breakthrough growth in the next two or three years.
A revolution in the smart street lamp pole industry has spread across the country, and the battle for the smart street lamp pole industry is ready to start.
▲ Chinese wisdom lamp pole "reed flower"
3、 "Smart" players enter the game to seize the beach, and "streetlight" enterprises are desperate to survive
In the past two or three years, many players have entered the Smart Road lamppost market continuously. According to the 2019 Smart Lamp Pole Industry Market Research Report, there are no less than 400-500 enterprises claiming to own "smart lamp poles", while the number of smart street lamp pole enterprises with landing products has increased from very few to about 50 in the past three years, with an annual growth rate of more than 60%. However, some insiders also revealed that at present, the smart street lamp circle is bustling and chaotic. In fact, there are only 2-3 enterprises that can solve practical problems for the owners and have actually implemented projects.
▲ Trend chart of the number of smart light pole enterprises
At present, players in the field of intelligent street light poles are roughly divided into three categories. The first is the traditional streetlight enterprises, streetlight pole enterprises and control system enterprises, the second is the giants in the fields of communication and Internet technology, and the third is the cross-border new players such as security enterprises, display screen manufacturers, charging pile enterprises. In the construction of multi-functional smart road lighting poles, at present, most of them are directly purchased by the government, coordinated by tower operators, and coordinated by three types of players in local construction planning.
▲ Play methods of some typical smart street lamppost players
Wang Yinghua, president of Shanghai Sansi Electronic Engineering Co., Ltd., said that the current smart light pole project is based on the overall layout at the government level, so it involves many departments. For small and medium-sized projects, almost all of them are in the form of traditional engineering orders, while large projects generally adopt the form of tripartite or multi-party cooperation. Both large and small projects provide rare opportunities for three types of players.
1. Traditional lamp manufacturers grasp the delivery advantage and seek cooperation from outside
As aborigines in the field of street lighting, traditional lighting and lamp pole enterprises occupy the highland of the project landing with their deep industrial foundation of street lighting, and actively seek ecological development.
According to the reporter's investigation, the smart street lamp poles piloted in Zhongguancun and other places in Beijing recently came from Zhongzhide Company, which started as a street lamp. It is understood that the Zhongguancun Smart Road Light Pole Project is currently in the first phase of the pilot project. At the request of the local management committee, CIDE will pilot about 30 light poles, and will follow up the second and third phases of the pilot project.
In the face of competition, some traditional streetlight enterprises have consolidated their industrial base advantages through self-developed systems and strengthening construction capabilities. Zhang Guichun, CEO of Zhongzhide Company, told Zhidong reporter that in order to win the bid for Zhongguancun Smart Road Light Pole, Badaling Smart Light Pole and other projects, on the one hand, they prepared the self-developed system and the productivity of lamps, that is, the self-developed ability of "software and hardware", so as to improve the cost performance of the light pole. On the other hand, it is the construction capacity. It is said that CID has set up a special internal construction supervision department to ensure project delivery. There is no other company in the industry that is really specialized in construction.
The manufacturer of "software and hardware" is also Shanghai Sansi. Since 2016, the company has been implementing smart street lamp pole projects such as "Around the Hangzhou G20 Summit Site", "Shanghai International Expo", "Hubin Road Pedestrian Street Smart Street Lamp", etc. It is said that the advantage of Shanghai Sansi is "the light screen is produced by itself and the system is independently developed".
▲ Relevant projects undertaken by Shanghai Sansi in Hangzhou
Compared with communication giants, the advantages of traditional street lamp/street lamp pole enterprises lie in their deep landing experience. Zhang Guichun said that the landing of the light pole on the Smart Road also involves many practical problems such as the bearing capacity of the light pole, which is also the reason why Huawei, ZTE and other giants focus on the software system rather than the hardware and the overall scheme.
In order to improve "wisdom", some traditional street lamp manufacturers also choose to establish cooperation with technology giants, large operators, industrial alliances, etc. Taking Huati Technology as an example, the company has actively served as the initiator and director of the Guangdong Smart Pole Industry Alliance, and has established cooperation with Huawei, Inspur and Mobile to enhance its sense of existence in the "Smart City" ecosystem. In addition, CSTC has tried many business models in actual projects, such as government purchase and use, government purchase and enterprise operation, and enterprise purchase and operation.
2. Communication giants provide integrated systems, which are widely distributed by lamp manufacturers
When it comes to smart light poles, Hao Yingtao, president of Huawei's wireless site product line, said: "Huawei's business focus has always been to produce and research communication equipment. Although we are doing some standardization work on smart light poles, these work is only to promote the rapid development of the industry, not to produce" lights "and" poles ". We always believe that professional work needs to be done by professional companies. "
Although Huawei and other giants do not go deep into the hardware level of "lights" and "poles" at present, they are defaulted as "troublemakers" and "promoters" of the industry. Wang Yinghua, president of Shanghai Sansi Electronic Engineering Co., Ltd., believes that the biggest difference between the advantages and disadvantages of a smart street lamp lies in whether you have the ability of system integration, business linkage, overall solution, software and hardware integration and later operation management. As long as the giants are willing to do these things, it will not be difficult.
As early as 2016, ZTE proposed the Blue Pillar scheme. Blue Pillar is composed of intelligent charging pile, 4GiMacro new concept base station, intelligent control box and intelligent street lamp.
ZTE successfully built the first Blue Pillar sample site in Shenzhen Industrial Park in early 2016 and began to operate. After that, ZTE not only established smart street lamp pilot projects with local governments and tower companies in Shaanxi, Jiangsu and other regions, but also went abroad to build smart street lamps for countries or cities such as Medellin, the second largest city in Romania and Colombia.
In March 2018, Huawei strongly entered the field of intelligent lighting and released the industry's first multi-level intelligent control lighting IoT solution, which integrates urban lighting street lights into the IoT network. After that, Huawei started a series of cooperation with lighting enterprises. Huawei has established cooperation with lighting enterprises such as Huati, Oupu, Lidazin and Microelectronics to promote the layout of the Internet of Things in urban lighting and other fields.
"As a design and manufacturing supplier of lighting control chips, Huawei has participated in the competition and formulation of many lighting control standards and related protocols. At the same time, as the world's top information and communication solution supplier, Huawei has its own plans and ambitions to lead the lighting change by relying on its own advantages and integrating relevant technologies." Yu Qingsong, deputy chief engineer of IBS, commented on Huawei.
▲ Huawei's smart street light solution in Dubai
In addition, in the scenario solutions of Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, we can also see that smart lighting is one of the most core smart scene applications. With cloud services, Alibaba and Tencent's ambition may be to create a grid nerve through smart street lights