These Joburg suburbs are getting 15,000 CCTV cameras

(Photo by Victor Garcia on Unsplash)

• Vumacam, a subsidiary of fibre infrastructure company Vumatel, is installing 15,000 high-definition CCTV cameras in Joburg suburbs.
• The cameras are connected to Vumatel's fibre network, and the live feeds are sold to security companies.
  
• Bryanston, Craighall and Greenside among others already have street cameras that pick up to 480 car registration plates per minute.
• The suburb of Dunkeld saw a 90% drop in crime since the addition of CCTV cameras, according to Vumacam. 

Some 15,000 CCTV cameras will be installed in Johannesburg suburbs by a new subsidiary of fibre infrastructure company Vumatel.

The new company, Vumacam, is erecting cameras that transmit a live feed to a data centre via Vumatel's fibre infrastructure.

The video traffic generate a staggering 30 petabytes or 30,000 terabytes (30TB) of data per month. The video feed is in high resolution boasting ultra-high-definition (UHD).

A street pole with CCTV cameras mounted at the top. (Vumacam)

The live CCTV footage is sold to security companies that operate in the suburbs, says Ashleigh Parry, managing director of Vumacam. 

The suburb of Dunkeld saw a 90% drop in crime since the addition of CCTV cameras, according to Parry.

Some 2,500 more street poles are currently being erected across additional Joburg suburbs like Ferndale, Linden, Sandhurst and Houghton Estate among others - ultimately, 15,000 CCTV cameras will be erected. 

Vumacam's CCTV cameras feature a license plate recognition functionality that scans about 480 vehicle plates per minute against multiple databases like the SA police's stolen vehicles list. (Vumacam)

The cameras have an impressive high-tech licence plate recognition feature that scans the plates of about 480 passing vehicle per minute.

Using the fast internet connectivity, these plates are checked against the SA police's database of stolen vehicles, forged plates and perpetrators on the run.

Parry tells Business Insider South Africa that once a wayleave (property owner's permission to dig their land) is granted, it normally takes 8-12 weeks to setup a CCTV camera.

Power outages during load shedding have proved a challenge - however, there is a backup plan in place (which Parry cannot disclose for security and confidentiality reasons) that ensures the live feed is never severely impacted.

"The cameras were up and running 99.3% of the time in the past month," says Parry. 

For more go to Business Insider South Africa.

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