Philips Lighting has chosen Vodafone for its CityTouch connected street lighting platform, a globally available hardware portfolio that provides energy-saving LED streetlights that can incorporate sensor hubs – the backbone of emerging smart city deployments, which will play a foundational role in the Internet of Things (IoT). Cities are increasingly investing in smart lighting deployments, because they represent an immediate return on IoT investment, due solely to their superior energy efficiency. With CityTouch, Philips claims that it can provide an additional 30% saving on top of the 40% reduction that most cities enjoy. Additional revenues can also be generated by cities that build out private networks, which isn’t an option in the Vodafone-Philips model, as the city can sell or…