Greater Manchester Police has completed the deployment of a
wireless broadband
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera network around
the city.
Manchester is thought to be the first city outside London to
benefit from a network of ANPR cameras in and around the city,
which now makes it virtually impossible to drive a car into the
centre without having its number plate, colour and time of entry
recorded.
The initiative by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is intended to
reinforce the fight against crime, terrorism and vehicle theft.
The cameras, which are located on pieces of street furniture,
use provider Manchester Metronet's wireless network infrastructure
to transfer about 600,000 ANPR reads each day back to GMP's
back-office ANPR system in real-time, where data is to be held for
a period of five years.
The use of wireless technology to support ANPR data transmission
to this extent is unique.
Mike George, ANPR project manager at GMP, said, "The
availability of Metronet wireless connectivity in an urban
environment has given us ease of installation and greater
flexibility over traditional fibre-optic cable networks that have
usually been employed for this type of project."