[Bradford] The move to LED lighting in cities

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:17 PM, Brian A <bradlug at techchico.org.uk> wrote:
> Interesting pictures and article about the move to LED lighting in cities.
> It seems that with the long life of the lighting units (thus probable less
> income), the lighting companies have moved to make money out of software to
> control and monitor the lighting.

Or been forced to switch their business model away from pushing
over-priced low-quality replacement parts (vendor lock-in was hardly
new when applied to software), p'haps..

I expect that the high cost of selling into large public corporations
will discourage players with alternative business models for a while,
but hopefully open source offerings may one day allow smaller players
to compete by offering pure-services plays...

...

Of course, in some other world where solutions to the big issues of
the day did not necessarily have to further enrich political elites
(directly into back pockets in most of the world, indirectly through
future careers and donations in the more refined) and well-connected
major corporations (whether national-champions in the EU, global
multi-nationals for Atlanticists or state entities amongst
neo-statists of the right, left or nowhere-in-particular), a modest
capital investment in research and development, smart public
procurement and a sane borrowing system (allowing councils to pay back
the capital costs over time) would have created a balanced, open
market for streetlighting here in Blighty, saving not only public
sector costs but also reducing carbon emissions...

Robert