use the streetlight-generated data to help motorists identify open parking spaces. But they also see potential applications for managing traffic jams, helping blind pedestrians, detecting drunk drivers, and measuring carbon dioxide to help chart the city’s progress on its state-mandated climate action plan. Current has even tested “ShotSpotter” technology in San Diego that uses microphone sensors on streetlights to help law enforcement officials triangulate the locations of shooters from the sound of gunshots fired.
Still, many of these applications have yet to be developed. To encourage a proliferation of apps and ideas, Ashe said San Diego can open its CityIQ platform to software developers. The city also has partnered with GE and AT&T to spur ideas through local hackathons.
In some corners of San Diego’s IoT developer community, however, questions have arisen over the past year about GE’s plans to sell Current, along with its lighting business, which includes the venerable light bulbs that helped launch the conglomerate over a century ago. The decision is part of a shakeup of the Boston-based corporation under CEO John Flannery, who has been trying to restructure the business since he took over the company last year.
At the Scale San Diego IoT accelerator, for example, founder Daniel Obodovski said he wants to know what impact the sale of Current by GE might have on San Diego’s CityIQ platform. Are there plans to ensure continuity in the deployment and operations of the project in the event of a buyout? (With 50 companies expressing interest, according to the Edison Report, GE reportedly wants to close the sale by the end of this year.)
Asked about such concerns, Ashe minimized the potential for disruption. “The buyer of Current is going to buy all of our technology,” he said. “None of our customers are worried about this. All they want is the data. We haven’t had any pushback from our customers.”
David Graham, San Diego’s deputy chief operating officer, who is overseeing the CityIQ project, also expressed confidence that the sale of Current by GE would not disrupt San Diego’s pioneering project.
In an e-mail to Xconomy, Graham wrote: “The technology we are buying is technology that Current by GE is producing right now. The software that enables the data and controls is software that is powering the industrial Internet around the world. The added services that will help with parking, mobility, pedestrian safety, and helping us achieve our climate action goals can either be sourced through our partnership with Current by GE, or directly with other companies that have applications that can work off the data generated by the smart streetlight sensors.
“Companies change hands all the time, and maintaining good relationships with customers is critical to getting the value out of any acquisition,” Graham added. “We’re confident that during any transition of Current by GE that the San Diego project and its groundbreaking work will remain a priority.”
