Police Networks Over GPRS

Last week we wrote about the San Mateo police department covering their downtown area with a WiFi mesh for police to use to retrieve and send data to police databases. Over in the UK, however, a police department has decided to go with a GPRS solution instead. They're equipping officers with rugged laptops that include GPRS cards for the same basic purpose. In this case, it seems that GPRS might be a better solution. The officers aren't likely to be doing much web surfing, so the amount of data throughput needed isn't necessarily that high. Meanwhile, GPRS gives them much wider coverage, fewer security questions and doesn't require them to maintain their own wireless infrastructure. Of course, as more people realize that GPRS isn't really an "always-on" solution this system might experience some hiccups as well.

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