[BC] The answer...

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/25/2005 10:03:34 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
daaugies at juno.com writes:

> Those strange transmitters on the streetlights...
>  
>  Those might be part of an electric meter reading network.  The units on
>  the streelights are base stations and use some sort of spread spectrum to
>  communicate with the electric meters and with each other.  I thought they
>  worked at 800 MHz though.

It could have also been an early attempt at a TIS service, employing multiple 
low-power transmitters to cover a given area.

Some time ago, someone provided a link to a company that sells these kinds of 
low-power "repeaters" to permit Part 15 compliant emitters to be placed such 
that many miles of road can be covered, or a whole town, etc. The major 
drawback of the system (IMHO) is that it uses an ISM freq in the 13Mhz band (NBFM) 
to relay the station audio to the Broadcast-Band repeaters. (AM or FM.) They 
were not cheap.

I wonder if these streetlight units we are discussing are remnants of an 
operation like this. Apparently, it went belly-up long ago and the transmitters 
were all just left in place to rot.

Willie...