Optical fibre has long been the standard for backbone networks and camera connections, but advances in wireless are challenging that norm. For many CCTV and critical infrastructure projects, wireless now delivers the capacity needed in less time and at lower cost, and it can reach places fibre cannot.
The headline numbers
- Up to 80% less installation time than fibre, because there is no trenching or other civil work
- Around 55% lower cost to connect two locations 1 km (0.6 mi) apart
- Savings of as much as 82% when the distance doubles to 2 km (1.2 mi)
What drives the cost of fibre
The cable itself is rarely the expensive part. Most of the cost of fibre is civil work: trenching or ducting, permits, traffic management and reinstating roads and pavements. Crossing a road, a railway, a river or private land adds cost and time. Because that work is paid for by the metre, the bill rises with every extra metre between the camera and the control room.
What drives the cost of wireless
A wireless link costs the radios at each end, the antennas, the mounting and the power, which with PoE can be a single cable. The cost depends on the number of links, not on the distance between them, so the gap with fibre widens as sites get further apart. Anywhere networks carry no licence fees, so the cost scales with the hardware rather than with the size of the network.
Time to install
Fibre projects often wait weeks or months for permits and civil work. Wireless nodes mount on existing poles, walls and rooftops. Geylang Serai Bazaar in Singapore had its event surveillance running within one day. Fung Kai Schools in Hong Kong connected five campuses in days without interrupting classes, and Whitsunday Regional Council in Australia brought more than 100 HD cameras online in less than two months.
When fibre is the better choice
Fibre remains the right answer for very high, sustained capacity on a fixed route, for links already served by existing ducts, and where a radio path cannot be found. Where fibre is already in the ground, wireless often works best alongside it, extending the network to new cameras or backing up a fibre link if it is cut.
Bandwidth
Video surveillance is one of the most demanding uses of a network, sometimes with hundreds of high-resolution streams. Anywhere nodes offer a data rate of up to 1,201 Mbps per radio, and dual radios keep throughput up across more than 30 hops. Cabanatuan City in the Philippines runs 300 CCTV cameras, flood systems, traffic lights and paging systems on one wireless network.
Reliability
A single fibre cut can take every camera behind it offline until a crew repairs it. Ring and mesh designs give each wireless node more than one path, and Anywhere networks move traffic to another path in under a second when a link fails.
Coverage
Wireless can also cover wide areas where fibre would be impractical. Our largest wireless mesh installation covers more than 230 km (143 mi) in total, connecting a rural province.
Security
Security needs a holistic approach. Anywhere networks use AES-128 on the wireless link and AES-256 end to end, so data stays encrypted throughout the network, with client and neighbour MAC access control as well.
Questions that decide it
- How far is each camera from the nearest network connection?
- What civil work, permits and road or rail crossings would fibre need?
- How soon does the system need to be running?
- How much bandwidth do the cameras need, now and after upgrades to 4K?
- Is there existing fibre to extend or back up?