Toshiba International Corporation (TIC) partners with the City of Stratford, Ontario to initiate a pilot project to evaluate replacing existing streetlights (potentially as many as 4,000 units) with energy-efficient Toshiba LED fixtures and assist with the City’s smart community initiatives.
 
This public-private collaboration helped earn Stratford the title of “Top Seven Intelligent Community for 2012” by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) a New York-based think tank dedicated to studying the use of information and communications technology to create the community of the 21st Century. Stratford shares the kudos with communities having populations and economies many times its size: Austin, Texas; Oulu, Finland; Quebec City, Quebec; Riverside, California; Saint John, New Brunswick and Taichung City, Taiwan. All seven communities were feted last week at ICF’s annual “Building The Broadband Economy” summit conference in New York City. The goal of the awards program is to increase awareness of the role that broadband communications and information access technologies play in shaping the economic and social development of communities worldwide.

The pilot project also involves TIC working with the City to test communications-enabled fixtures that tie into the City’s Smart Grid network. TIC recognized the benefits of piloting this technology in the small, but highly innovative, city after visiting Stratford and meeting with the Mayor and other community and business leaders.