Cities of the future that can monitor the environment and traffic on each block may begin with the humble streetlamp.

Lights are ubiquitous infrastructure that most cities already have in place. They usually sit on poles, where new gadgets can be mounted up and away from vandals and plugged into the power grid. Need a reason to replace the lamps with new, networked ones? The LED revolution is here.

That’s why streetlamps are a highlight of many pitches for smart cities. Huawei Technologies, the Chinese tech giant that made networking more competitive, now has its sights on this sector. This week at CeBIT, Huawei introduced the Connected City Lighting Solution, which promises to work with third-party sensors in addition to saving cities energy and money.

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