Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police have implemented high-speed wireless links to extend the reach of their metropolitan area network and improve CCTV monitoring.

The wireless technology will allow real-time surveillance monitoring of hundreds of cameras, while giving the city council and police the flexibility to place cameras wherever they need them to enhance crime prevention and apprehension.

Factors behind the upgrade include congestion at one of the control centres when a 100Mb/s backhaul link became oversaturated with video traffic.

The organisations also plan to deploy further wireless links to support other bandwidth-intensive applications.

The wireless links were deployed by broadband wireless network supplier Manchester Metronet, using systems provided by BridgeWave Communications.