Smart pole project of MSCL to be ready by September: MD

Mangaluru: This coastal city’s tryst with smart poles that are being set up under the Smart Cities Mission is likely to fructify by September end. With one such pole set up at Kadri-Mallikatte, for demonstration, beaming live feed to the command control centre of Mangaluru Smart City Ltd (MSCL), authorities of this special purpose vehicle are confident the entire project will be operational in the next two months.
Chennai -based Madras Security Printers, a leading smart city solutions company which has executed the command control centre of MSCL, and has also been entrusted the smart pole project, said Mohammad Nazeer, managing director of the SPV. But for the nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic, the project should have been up and running from August, Nazeer said. “Material procurement from Chennai was hit due to the lockdown,” he said.
The smart pole with four directional and one PTZ camera in addition to supplementing the law and order and traffic surveillance efforts of Mangaluru city police through its own network of CCTV cameras will have an SOS button embedded on the pole, Nazeer said. “The SOS can help police and other authorities to attend to distress calls that a person has flagged in real time,” Nazeer said, adding that the command and control centre can also dispatch help.
A public address system will help authorities relay information to the people, he said adding the 2ft x 3ft digital display board on the pole will help MSCL relay advisories and other message from the district administration and other government departments. This board that will be upgraded to colour, and will also help the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) earn revenue by way of authorising advertisers to beam advertisements, Nazeer explained.
While private telecom companies can use the antenna on the pole as signal boosters, people can use it as an emergency phone charging point. MSCL in conjunction with Mescom also has plans to allow electric cars to recharge using the recharge point on the pole.