MuniWireless

Granbury, Texas will be deploying 15 video surveillance cameras starting in October 2008. This project will build upon the Tropos Wi-Fi mesh network that the city operates for public safety and public access. The city is increasing the number of Tropos wireless nodes from 110 to 150 to cover additional areas that have been annexed by the City since the original deployment. Installation of mobile routers in all police vehicles is also under way. These cameras are the same type…

Southlake, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, is also using Wi-Fi for video surveillance in its downtown area. They are using equipment from Bridgwave Communications; the systems integrator is Redmoon, a wireless ISP based in Plano, Texas. Wireless video surveillance is one of the most sought-after applications among cities. However, as many UK cities have discovered, it’s not enough to put up cameras. You need people to monitor the images and do something about them to make it effective in fighting…

The city of Florissant, Missouri (pop. 51,000; 11.4 square miles outside St. Louis) is installing wireless cameras as part of a citywide Wi-Fi network for public safety. The first three cameras have already been set up in areas that are plagued by vandalism. The remaining ten will be installed in various parts of the city. People are worried about invasions of privacy, but police departments everywhere are conscious of this and do take precautions, perhaps not to the satisfaction of…

Last week I interviewed Lt. Tony Crawford of the Dallas Police Department to get a better picture of how the they are using wireless cameras installed in various parts of the central business district (CBD) to tackle crime. I wanted to know more about this project after reading a newspaper article on how the cameras captured a robbery at a Dallas bus station and allowed the police to arrest the suspect within a short period of time.

Among the questions I…

The city of London has been making life difficult for motorists in the past few years and for good reason. The mayor instituted a “congestion charge”, a fee that people driving into London have to pay for the privilege of accessing this traffic clogged city. Now, the city is going after speeding motorists via Wi-Fi cameras which, unlike the old cameras, communicate with one another so that they track a car as it goes down the street. They measure average…

I just came back from an exhausting three days at the Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM) in Barcelona, talking to mobile device manufacturers (specifically Nokia), MVNOs and applications developers. Several things struck me.

First, at the Nokia press conference on Monday morning, February 11, after the CEO and one of the executives announced the new Nokia devices (6210 Navigator, N96, 6220 with 5-megapixel camera), analysts and journalists could ask only one question: when is Nokia going to embed touch screen technology…