Ring in the new

But it was a short-lived anxiety. In fact, it petered out when even the angriest of mobophobes found themselves owning one of the darned things and adding to the general cacophony of pointless conversation and tuneless melody.

However, the latest security technology has vaulted the mobile phone onto a loftier pedestal. According to Welsh technicians, Pedagog, its new open circuit television security system (octv) allows anyone with mobile phone (or a desktop/laptop pc or hand-held palm computer) to transmit and receive high quality video pictures to and from anywhere in the world.

“If the mobile phone can get a signal, it can send and receive video pictures,” says Pedagog.

“The system is not experimental. It is in production now and it works over any distance and in any weather.”

The principal function of octv is to provide remote surveillance via the mobile phone network, through a camera which can be held in the palm of the hand or bolted to a wall or installed in the ceiling of every room in a house or office building.

According to Dr Olinga Ta’eed, managing director of Pedagog: “The system’s applications are almost limitless, ranging from replacement of conventional cctv systems in town centres, to covert surveillance in department stores and supermarkets, and from access control on a building site to anti-vandal surveillance in schools, football stadia and public buildings.”

Moreover, this video-by-mobile phone system is reckoned to cost only a fraction of conventional cctv since there is no wiring involved.

Ta’eed explains: “In a town centre cctv system, the initial cost of the cameras, brackets and monitors is only a small proportion of the total outlay. Running a cable for each camera down the side of a building and under the road to take the pictures back to the monitoring centre in the nearest police station can cost five times the amount spent on the equipment itself – plus, of course, the expense of paying operators to watch the system throughout the day”.

It is ironic that mobile phones have been derided as an essential tool for any serious criminal. Ta’eed believes that the new technology provides a lifeline for the law enforcement fraternity.

He says: “A police officer can carry a palm-sized computer in his pocket with a mobile phone on his belt and a tiny camera no bigger than a cigarette lighter on the lapel.

“The officer can send video pictures continuously while on the streets or interviewing a suspect who will be completely unaware that his every move can be watched not only back at the station but also by every other officer in the area – or in Scotland Yard or Beijing for that matter.”

The courts have confirmed that pictures taken by octv will be accepted as being of evidential quality.

“Transmissions can be encrypted so that unauthorised viewers can’t pick up the pictures. But if you have been provided with the PIN code, you can watch from anywhere in the world where a mobile phone will operate. There is no loss of picture clarity even over 12 000 miles,” explains Ta’eed.

The implications for individual household security reach even further, we are told, making it possible to watch your home for burglars wherever in the world you may be! And since neither end needs any wiring, the system should be available to the householder for no more than £500.

In bigger systems video footage can be stored on a DVD disk, which can hold as much information as a whole roomful of video tapes – a compact solution to the problem of having to retain two years or more of records. And more than two months of recorded images can be held in the camera installation itself.

Picture quality is said to be better than on conventional time-lapsed cctv (as typically seen on Crimewatch). But Ta’eed predicts that increases in the data transmission rates of mobile phone networks and improvements in the capabilities of devices running on the Microsoft Windows CE operating system, the speed of transmission and processing of video should “increase rapidly leading eventually to the standard we now get on our domestic television screens”.

But the key feature is surely economy. Pedagog cites a typical application. In Newport town centre the cctv equipment cost £48 000. Installation and wiring costs added another £250 000 to the bill plus £100 000 pa running costs. Across four years, the whole system cost

£800 000. Pedagog claims octv could bring this figure down by as much as 80%, since installation costs are minimal, requiring merely the bolting of the camera and its housing to the wall and plugging into the mains; the monitoring can be done at any time by any authorised person with a mobile phone, computer combination and the appropriate PIN number.

It seems that the much-maligned mobile, the most potent pubescent toy since the Sony Walkman, is finally growing up. Installers of security equipment need to take note.