Streetlights are among the most familiar forms of public infrastructure in a city. As cameras, environmental sensors, communications equipment and artificial intelligence are progressively integrated into poles, this infrastructure is taking on new roles: detecting unusual activity on streets, monitoring environmental changes, delivering public information and even serving as frontline nodes that help cities anticipate risks and coordinate services.
Yet adding functions to equipment does not automatically improve a city’s ability to govern. The practical value of smart poles depends on whether data can be understood, whether different systems can work together, who responds when an incident occurs and whether residents trust how their data is used.
At the “Smart Taichung: Smart Poles for the Future” forum on October 2, Olivier Colaisseau, Mayor of Chanteloup-en-Brie, France; Chung Yu Huang, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Pegatron; Chee Ching, President of Far EasTone Telecommunications; and Peter Wu, CEO of ASUS Cloud and Taiwan AI Cloud, examined these issues through public policy, system deployment, service operations and AI governance. Together, their presentations outlined a path forward: identify the problems a city needs to solve, build interoperable infrastructure, accumulate data through sustained operations and, ultimately, enable AI to support governance within clearly defined authority and accountability.
Mayor Colaisseau on Rethinking Public Problems as the Starting Point for Smart Cities
Mayor Olivier Colaisseau cautioned against using new technology to prolong public policies that no longer work. Before deploying equipment, decision-makers must clarify the problems and public objectives involved, rather than simply accelerating existing processes without improving residents’ lives. Citing the relationship between water supply and energy, he explained that urban systems are interconnected and that governance must extend across departmental boundaries.
His urban agriculture examples also connected smart cities with ecology. Crops depend on pollinating insects, while artificial light at night affects biological activity. Lighting management must therefore account for daylight, traffic and crop cycles. According to his presentation, Chanteloup-en-Brie was among the earlier French municipalities to switch off streetlights at night, making lighting policy a tool for addressing both energy use and ecological needs.
The municipality also collected pollen carried by bees over two consecutive years. DNA analysis identified plant species and gaps in the insects’ food sources, informing adjustments to annual public planting plans to support pollination and urban agriculture. Data collection thus served a clear purpose: helping the city refine its policies.
For Taichung, these experiences suggest that smart pole configurations should respond to the needs of each location. Busy intersections, parks and residential areas require different sensing and lighting arrangements, with outcomes assessed in terms of safety, ecology and quality of life. Defining problems before deployment and evaluating results afterward can turn technology into a basis for policy adjustment, rather than a display of equipment. A city’s intelligence should also be judged by its ability to solve problems.
CTO Huang on Moving Beyond Individual Devices to Build a City Platform
CTO Chung Yu Huang used a proof of concept conducted by the 5G Smart Pole Technical Standards Promotion Alliance on the sidewalk outside Taipei City Hall’s east entrance to explain how smart poles evolve from collections of equipment into integrated system platforms. The installation adopted a “three poles, one cabinet” design, combining lighting, communications, traffic and environmental detection, digital signage and electric vehicle charging.
Integration challenges arise both within the poles and below ground. Excavating foundations, restoring paving, splicing optical fiber and routing power cables all require coordination among different teams. The presentation advised against placing power conduits too close to the bottom of roadside drains, where subsequent construction could damage them. This highlighted the need to understand on-site construction and maintenance conditions when developing smart infrastructure.
The system also incorporated shared-pole arrangements for several telecommunications operators at the time, tested 5G millimeter-wave connectivity and mobile network backhaul, and considered alternative transmission routes in the event of fixed-network fiber failures. When devices share power and network connections, a single failure can affect multiple services. Redundancy, cybersecurity and physical security must therefore be planned during deployment.
By publishing standards, conducting field trials and revising specifications, the alliance built experience that could inform future installations. More broadly, standardization supports interoperability and service expansion, while extending opportunities for Taiwan’s industry beyond component supply into system integration, validation and ongoing services. To serve overseas markets, companies must also address local construction conditions, operational responsibilities and urban streetscapes, translating technical capabilities into public infrastructure that remains usable over the long term.
President Ching on Helping Cities Detect Problems and Follow Through on Responses
President Chee Ching described shared smart poles as a city’s sensing nodes and gateways to services embedded in everyday life. By “integrating, seeing, understanding and responding,” they connect streetlights, surveillance cameras, sensors and digital signage. The central challenge is to turn data into action: every step, from detecting anomalies and issuing alerts to dispatching personnel and resolving incidents, must be connected.
She proposed a four-layer architecture covering sensing, connectivity, analysis and services. It uses vision AI, big data and AI agents to interpret signals, with a digital twin interface supporting management across city departments. Abnormal water levels may require coordinated responses involving drainage, disaster prevention and traffic management. Shared information helps agencies understand conditions on the ground, but it must be accompanied by clear response procedures.
Long-term operations and maintenance determine whether services can be sustained. According to figures in Far EasTone’s presentation, its smart streetlight deployment, operations and maintenance portfolio covers 330,000 lights nationwide, with a connectivity availability rate of 97.7%. At Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, AR tours, photography and interactive applications have recorded a cumulative 1.88 million uses, illustrating the potential of smart infrastructure for tourism and everyday services.
As services become more closely woven into residents’ lives, data governance becomes increasingly important. President Ching outlined de-identification, tiered management, least-privilege access and end-to-end auditing to ensure that data access is regulated and traceable. Cities should therefore evaluate shared smart poles in terms of service availability, response efficiency and public trust. Bringing equipment online is only the beginning; sustained improvements in public services are the true measure of operational success.
CEO Wu on the Path to AI Cities Through Data Interoperability and Integrated Tasks Under Local Control
CEO Peter Wu outlined the evolution from smart cities to AI cities, explaining how technology is progressing from cloud computing, the Internet of Things and image recognition toward AI capable of prediction, reasoning and execution. Future systems may help organize information, offer recommendations and connect workflows within authorized limits to support more complex urban tasks.
He noted that competition is shifting from the capabilities of individual models to those of complete systems. Data, computing power, models, permissions and workflows must work together to support applications. In an urban health service example, his presentation proposed connecting health data with residents’ authorization to assess risks and provide personalized health education. A medication safety AI agent combined a local knowledge base, source citations and execution logs to strengthen traceability.
These examples show that deploying AI in public services requires both domain expertise and governance mechanisms. Discussions of sovereign AI therefore also concern a city’s ability to manage data use, adapt models and maintain control over system operations.
One key point is that data integration does not require data centralization. To support tasks across domains, data must be discoverable, understandable, governable, accessible according to permissions and traceable. For smart poles, this means processing data at the edge or in the cloud as needed, while using shared rules to support cooperation among departments. Cities must also distinguish tasks that can be executed automatically from those requiring human confirmation, ensuring that AI capabilities and public accountability develop together.
Taichung’s Next Step Is to Turn Smart Pole Infrastructure into Stronger Urban Governance
Taken together, the four speakers’ perspectives reveal several interdependent conditions for building smart cities. Public policy determines how technology is used; system integration enables devices to work together; sustained operations maintain service quality; and data and AI governance support more advanced judgment and action.
For Taichung, the value of smart poles should be grounded in specific locations and public problems. Safer intersections, earlier detection of environmental anomalies, faster repairs to public infrastructure and residents’ understanding of and trust in data use are all outcomes worth tracking over time.
This also places new demands on Taiwan’s industry. Expanding from hardware supply into urban services requires coordinated capabilities in construction, communications, cybersecurity, platforms, AI, operations and maintenance. It also requires turning local demonstrations into solutions that other cities can adopt, adapt and manage over the long term.
The number of devices a smart pole can carry demonstrates technical integration capability. Whether those devices can support public services over the long term tests the collaborative capacity of the entire city. As policy objectives, industrial expertise and data governance become aligned, a streetlight can truly become a starting point for understanding conditions on the ground and responding to a city’s needs.
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