Recent news that two of South Africa's cellular network operators are to invest R11.3 billion primarily in adding to the country's total of some 20 000 base stations is welcome news for TeleEye SA which already protects a large number of the country's mobile towers.

TeleEye's remote visual solutions are playing a significant role in ensuring greater uptime of mobile services, particularly in rural areas, through their remote alarm verification and video management capabilities. "If one considers that the mobile network operators currently claim to cover between 92 percent and 99.8 percent of the population, then it's clear that the majority of new base stations are being erected in remote rural areas. It is practically impossible to manage a human guarding presence when your multimillion rand base station is located many kilometers from the nearest town," said Philip Smerkovitz, Managing Director of TeleEye SA.

The solution, according to Mr Smerkovitz, is to monitor the site remotely from a central location using video surveillance and management tools. "Our mobile base station perimeter solution that is being deployed at sites across South Africa is no passive observer of unauthorised visitors. For example, the solution can even activate pepper spray to deter would-be vandals and thieves, after issuing a verbal warning delivered from possibly hundreds of kilometers away," explained Mr Smerkovitz. Unscheduled downtime greatly annoys mobile customers and is always a challenge when mobile firms attempt to manage isolated base station sites that are prone to unauthorised entry, either by curious visitors or others with criminal intent in mind.

According to Mr Smerkovitz, base station perimeter solutions are designed to use remote surveillance links to detect, deter and protect. "One tends to think of base stations are mere infrastructure. However, no matter their location, someone has to maintain them. Having a video surveillance and management system on site positively impacts on Health and Safety as accidents can rapidly be detected and help summoned," he says.

TeleEye is BS8418 compliant, which is a UK standard that is recognised as one of the most professional and reliable security-related standards in the CCTV industry.

The TeleEye Perimeter Solution includes:

• Site Surveillance Equipment (cameras, PA system, detectors, audio system etc.),
• Control Room (onsite and/or offsite),
• Remote Alarm Verification (remotely view and assess an activated alarm),
• Video Management (a digital platform for the management of video feeds),
• Concurrent Remote Video Access (remotely view and manage live video feeds -anyone, anywhere, anytime)
• Thermal cameras and analytics (accurately detect and track intruders in the absence of light it is a reliable day/night site protection system with the ability to differentiate between humans, animals and vehicles )