Manchester M60 Ring Road Goes With Wireless Cctv Network

The Manchester Metronet Metropolitan Area Network provides secure communications across the M60 motorway ring, from a series of rooftop Points of Presence (POP) sites across the region. The new CCTV system will use the network to transmit footage without the need for fibre optic cables or any other form of backhaul. The only requirement at the prospective CCTV site is mains power. Each camera is equipped a secure IP radio link to one of the 13 POP base stations, using a dedicated pair of matched radios and encoders. The cameras will be monitored by Manchester Metronet’s integration partner, Community Security. Manchester Metronet Sales & Marketing Director, James McCall claims that his company can deliver a more flexible and scalable solution and in less than one tenth of the time required for an RS1000 fibre circuit. According to McCall; “The technology we are using is not brand new – we have seen Video over IP and high capacity secure wireless networks before. The difference is that we have bought the two together to provide high quality, real time CCTV monitoring with full telemetry and much more flexibility than the traditional delivery mechanism.” Paul Cullen, Community Safety Manager at the Crime and Disorder Unit, said: “When we saw the quality of the video I was very impressed. It’s just as good as you would expect from fibre, but the most important thing for us is that the connections are mobile – that means we can place a camera in a particular trouble spot for a month and if that problem then moves, we can simply up sticks and follow it until we get a result.” Commsec Managing Director Tony Nuttall said: “We were very skeptical at first because we have tested many IP CCTV solutions and they have always been let down by low quality imagery and network and bandwidth issues. We spent a long time testing the Metronet Network system and it looks as though we have at last found a partner able to deliver a high quality connection anywhere in Manchester.” “We know the public sector very well and one of their most important considerations is long term return on investment,” says Nuttall. “The use of high quality solutions to specific problems has often not been possible because they are often left with an expensive but redundant resource. “But use of the Manchester Metronet system means we can now simply redeploy CCTV resources to the next required location. The IP platform means we can also deliver an entire solution down a single pipe – CCTV, Access control, Internet and voice services, all into the same location without multiple pipes. We are already working on various other opportunities in the public and private sector.”