San Francisco to Bring in $1 Million for Antennas on Streetlights

The idea of wireless antennas on streetlight poles isn’t a new one, but the execution is. City officials in San Francisco, California, plan to raise more than $1 million by charging private telecommunications companies a fee to install small wireless antennas on some of the city’s 16,800 publically owned street poles. Certain telecommunications companies have already approached the city to ask about putting “outdoor distributed antennae systems” — low-frequency antennas connected by fiber to wireless carriers’ hubs — on city-owned property like light poles, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. By renting out the light fixtures to telecom carriers, the city could make $4,000 a year per tower, a fee would that increase 4% each year.