Critical infrastructure demanding more from communications technology

Today, many municipalities and cities are trying to get smarter with their communication networks and systems. Furthermore, local government entities like traffic management, water/wastewater, fire departments, police stations, etc. are also craving high-speed networking to enable greater operational efficiencies.

Many municipalities today are installing broadband infrastructure via wired connections for high data throughput capabilities. However, these communication lines are also repeatedly subject to vandalism and theft—an ongoing security problem that not only can be costly to repair but is also costly, in terms of the daily operations taking a hit if communications are down for an extended period of time. So what can municipalities do to “backup” or provide redundancy to these communication networks? Add wireless to the equation.

Today, mobile broadband, remote broadband, security over wireless, and the mix of M2M and human machine interface (HMI) have all played significant roles in the evolution of wireless broadband networking solutions into their current state. The ability to securely extend high-speed wireless networks into many locations, while still maintaining mobility and end user device options, is an attractive offering. High-speed wireless M2M communications platforms are a perfect way for cities to provide communications redundancy to the core broadband network, via a choice of networking elements.

For example, a municipality can create a point-to-point communications network via RF technology to transmit high volumes of data for the backbone infrastructure. Additionally, these platforms can also enable cellular backhaul capabilities for network redundancy and/or enabling drop-in networks wherever cellular is available.