SEATTLE - You've seen them on TV - video from police car dash cameras. And while it's digital, dash-cam video isn't broadcasting live. But that could soon change.
Imagine a dash camera able to feed live video of earthquake damage or a terror attack into the city's emergency operations center as it happens.
A lot of our Broadband access is still pretty much dependent on wires. What the city wants to do is take a lot of what we're going when we're plugged in and put it over the air.
"This would be a 4th generation network. It would be high speed. It would allow two-way transmission of things like video - video from police vehicles, fire apparatus or similar things," said Bill Schrier, Seattle Chief Technology Officer.
Schrier is out to win the city a $17 million federal grant to build a city-owned 4G network.
Even cameras that send video from the streets over fiber-optic lines could send better pictures over the air.
But in a world where we can connect video wirelessly over smart phones now, what's the big deal?
"It's slow and kind of jerky," said Shrier.
He says this would be smoother, more dependable and high definition.
While the system would use commercial technology, the network would be exclusive for city use. Cell sites would be mounted in places including fire stations with backup power. It would couple to upgraded 911 centers that could send that video back out.
"So you could take a picture of somebody committing a crime, and it could be to responding police vehicles within seconds of the time that you send it to 911," he said.
Seattle will find out if it wins the Department of Commerce grant by the end of next month. Sixteen other cities are competing for the grant money.
To add a comment, please register or login.