Westminster's Soho is a major center of London nightlife and the security challenges are numerous and complex. The Council's initial pilot project was designed to implement a CCTV solution to target street crime and anti-social behaviour, build a residential community portal, and create an infrastructure for the delivery of various government services. The DVTel Latitude system is paired with Cisco WiFi and network equipment. Telindus, network solutions and services provider, served as the integrator for the network installation and provides overall project management for the CCTV element.

The project has been on-going for over five years and continues to deliver impressive end user benefits:

• Delivering a positive impact on crime reduction figures
• More effective management of scarce parking resources
• New camera set-up time significantly reduced.
• Significant savings per system camera as wireless set-up eliminates cabling costs
• Improved efficiency of mobile workers

The last benefit is of particular note for Westminster, as the Council brings more attention and resources to the mobility of its workforce. Andrew Snellgrove, Westminster network and security manager, commented, "We're moving from primarily a CCTV application for monitoring crime and managing parking to a multi-application network with a focus on mobilizing the workforce."

The Westminster Council is committed to increasing the efficiency of its 1250 full and part-time mobile staff members. Snellgrove again, "By leveraging our existing network and system resources, we're looking to deliver each Council Department's business needs to their mobile staff. Our final goal is to have a converged network with a CCTV system for city center management and parking enforcement integrated with service and data for our mobile workers. This successful project continues to expand in all three vital areas.

"Most city center surveillance programs are designed to prevent and investigate crime," said DVTel's EMEA MD, David Petrook. "Andrew and his Westminster team were innovative all the way back in 2004, seeing how a converged, integrated system could serve multiple needs and multiple end user customers."