I am aware of white SON, but I don't think much of it. Thanks to advances in ceramic metal halide lamps it is a bit pointless, as ceramic metal halide lamps are more efficient and most likely now cheaper and longer life. I have seen some enthusiasts mention online about white SON street lighting, but I don't believe it was ever used in street lighting and that this was just confusion for ceramic metal halide.I think it has seen use in the states as most of the information in a Google search brings America related products that I've seen so far. The states seem to value colour rendering and white light where possible, which is why I think they never gave LPS much time of day and in some places hung onto Mercury for a while. I know there are still some side streets in the US that are Mercury lit much like some of our side streets are still SOX lit, by virtue of simply having not needed to replace them yet.
It's another case of this lamp being pointless. If you want white light you can use ceramic metal halide, otherwise use standard SON. What's the point in a lamp that is half and half yet costs more to run and is most likely more expensive to buy? I'm sure it is pointless now (don't worry I've seen the figures for myself) but back when it was invented it was probably a lot more tenable, if not from a practical point of view to at least open people's eyes and drive the white light movement forward a bit. In the 80s we were also reeling from the economic decline that saw us roll out SOX lamps all over the place, so some fangled white light technology was probably the last thing on our minds which is why I guess it saw no uptake.
I do miss SON and other yellow light types as the government seems to prefer white light sadly.I won't really be missing HPS when it does go, but I do miss SOX, mainly for larger roads. I can take it or leave it on small streets, but I do think it's well suited to wider roads and motorways.
Although I'm a fan of SOX I'm not nostalgia blinded - I can see that white light is the future, but it annoys me that a lot of white light roll outs at the moment are ice white verging-on-blue-tinted LED crap. The only white light I've seen that I properly liked, in Manchester and Great Western Road (Glasgow) is a peachy-white light that I am 99% sure were CosmoPolis - ceramic metal halide. I'll also entertain warm white LEDs - whenever I do actually see one.
I do wonder with all these new developments in street lighting whether adventurous designs will start to come back. Our street lighting design has hardly been exciting since the beginning of the SOX era when I imagine generic SOX lanterns replaced quite a lot of nice mercury stock. It was of course the era of modernist design where due to the downturn, "function" was really the only goal of the design of, well everything, and that in itself became a design cue. Love it as I may there are a lot of SOX lanterns which you could hardly call an exciting design.