One of the real problems facing many smaller communities in UK towns is public safety. While the government has put in place a dedicated budget to help with the purchase and installation of surveillance systems under the Safer Towns Initiative, the real costs of installing CCTV in town centres can often be prohibitive.
The aggregated costs of installing an effective system include digging up roads to lay cables, as well as the actual costs of wiring, purchasing cameras, monitoring the stations, manpower and hardware. When these costs were added up and compared with the allocated budget under the Safer Towns Initiative, more than 42,000 smaller communities in the UK found that the budgets didn’t stretch far enough to cover the costs involved in installing CCTV in their towns.
Having identified an opportunity to produce a low-cost, high-quality video surveillance system to meet the needs of these smaller communities, Pedagog, a developer of bespoke end-to-end video solutions over mobile phone networks, turned to the Orange Developers’ Forum in 1998 to pioneer a wirefree closed circuit TV device.
Olinga Ta’eed, CEO of Pedagog, had conducted detailed IT research and development and video expertise. For some time, Ta’eed had concentrated on developing a rival system to CCTV comprising a wirefree system that worked over the mobile 2G GSM network. But while the system – Open Circuit Television or OCTV as it is likely to become known – offered a low-cost, viable solution, a key hurdle still remained. The GSM-based system was unable to sustain high-quality images in real-time. What was lacking was a technology that could transfer streaming data at high-speeds without diminishing quality.
Pedagog contacted the Orange Developers’ Forum, a body open to companies of all sizes who are committed to sharing knowledge and technical capabilities to devise innovative mobile voice and data solutions. From its informal beginnings in late 1999, to its official creation in September 2000, the Forum had grown to over 400 companies and had seen some significant collaborations across a wide range of commercial products and services.
In April 2000, Pedagog gained early access to Orange UK’s High-Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) network, the UK’s only high-speed data network, and was consequently able to create and test a solution before high-speed data was officially launched.
The argument for OCTV is persuasive and Orange UK gave its full support to the company during the trial period. As a wirefree technology, with no cabling required under roads, OCTV running on high-speed data is not only cheaper than fixed line CCTV but it is also more flexible because it isn’t permanently routed to one spot. Deployment of the system is also rapid because there is no major construction work involved in installing the cameras. Moreover, the flexibility of the technology gives rise to new markets where temporary surveillance is required.
The first Home Office-sponsored trial took place in Hexam, Northumberland, in November 2000, using GSM and HSCSD, with close support from both Orange UK and the Northumberland Police Force.
Police Constable Harry Wilkinson, crime prevention officer at Northumbria Police and one of the officers supporting the trials, comments: "Up until now, smaller communities in the region have been unable to take advantage of the Government’s Safer Town subsidies due to the extremely high cost of CCTV. It’s a relief for the region that a system that does the job is available at a fraction of the cost. Installation was very straightforward and we can control the cameras easily. Performance over HSCSD compared to GSM was significantly enhanced in terms of video frame rate and speed of control."
The trials were confirmed a success by the Home Office’s Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) in February 2001. And currently there are over 25 town centres that are waiting to receive Home Office grants for OCTV systems. Each of these systems is likely to involve between 3-10 cameras and monitor ends requiring high-speed data access.
Simon Cohen, head of business development at Pedagog, said: "Without access to high-speed data and Orange UK’s strong support, we could never have got the trials off the ground. Our GSM-based OCTV systems have been installed at a number of customer sites since 1999, but with HSCSD, OCTV is even better armed to meet operational requirements. Orange’s high-speed data network is the ideal data network for video applications and it means that we don’t have to wait around for GPRS and 3G."
Richard Hanscott, MD of Corporate Business at Orange, said: "This is a fantastic example of how developers can harness wirefree technology to create ground-breaking products. Seeing just the sort of applications that Orange technology can help to enable underscores the value of collaboration that is encouraged with the Developers’ Forum meetings."
The scope for using OCTV technology in the future is boundless, from enabling consumers to keep an eye on their homes to allowing site managers to monitor construction sites in a cost-effective way.
The company says that police forces nationwide are convinced of the system’s benefits, and the business and consumer markets are already beginning to take notice.
