Critical infrastructure providers increasingly rely on modern communication technology, to utilize mission-critical communication, which helps them carry out their operations better. However, existing communication networks are often outdated and cannot provide the required capacity, latency and reliability that is needed. Jimmy Bakakis, Sales Director Critical Infrastructure, discussed with Dr.Dahlit Brin how Ceragon’s wireless transmission solutions can help overcome these challenges.
Full interview transcript:
Welcome back to the Backhaul Lounge. I'm Dahlit Brin, and today I'm joined again by Jimmy Bakakis, Director of Critical Infrastructure. We're here to continue our conversation on critical infrastructure, communication challenges, and, today, we're finally going to talk about what we, as Ceragon, can do to help. Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us again.
Hi Dahlit. It's great, once again, to be back talking to you.
Wonderful. So we're going to talk about what we, as Ceragon, can do to help critical infrastructure providers to overcome their communication challenges, which you explained that are due to outdated networks that can no longer cater for modern communication technologies, which are so important to help them carry out their missions better. Be it real-time video streaming, large data analytics, which often, as you mentioned, can make the difference between life and death and in other critical instances. So what do we have to offer?
Well, Ceragon technology, in general, provides extremely high multi-gigabit capacity with five nine reliabilities and very low latency. So, of course, the specific requirements, frequency bands, location and distances that are needed to cover would be determined, would determine exactly which equipment we would recommend and use. But in essence, all of Ceragon solutions deliver very high performance and efficiency across the board.
Ok, so that's on a very high level. And first of all, it's very reassuring to know that, you know, we deliver all these qualities. Maybe to help me understand a little better, could you take an example, public defense, a police force. What would they be looking for from their communication networks?
So public safety in itself is kind of like the name kind of already states or suggests, its existence is to be there to keep the public safe. So that means things like saving lives, protecting property, maintaining order. So the current mission-critical networks that they have in place today are pretty much very voice-centric or narrowband. What that means is they're kind of mainly used to transfer voice, often via radios, but not much else. So they offer basic data capabilities, very limited capacity, and they're kind of limited in the capability to interconnect with other systems that may be maybe present.
So modern technology today offers a whole host of different capabilities. Things like body worn camera, the body worn cameras or dash cameras for video streaming, drone feeds, video from the drones, for example, GPS locations and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of data analytic, computer aided, dispatching report generation, event management, I mean, the list goes on and on. Every one of these examples that I just mentioned, they all require very robust network that can actually provide very clear voice communication, enabled broadband applications, support extremely high data rates, all while using industry standards to be ultra flexible, provide uncompromising security and availability. And of course, they have to be cost-effective as well,
Of course. Wow. That does sound a lot to ask for it. But obviously, we wouldn't be here if we couldn't actually cater for that.
Yeah, exactly. Like I mentioned before, Ceragon Solutions, in general, offer high reliability, they provide the five-nines reliability that we need for most network scenarios. Our radios provide a very high capacity enabling mission critical multimedia in real time. We talked about quick response or command visibility, mobile communications, all that is possible with the very low latency of our products, which brings high network service availability. Also, it's very important that we enable reliability and easy transition from the older networks to the new broadband LTE networks that are being deployed today. We provide flexibility and future proof upgrade path, remote second core activation capabilities, wideband feature, multi-vendor, multi-band solutions. All these help to make sure that the costs are kept down.
Wow. OK, so I'm just thinking about the typical representative from a public defense unit, for example. How would they know what to choose? Which technology was right? I mean, it's not that their core competence, right?
Exactly. And this is what we kind of need to remember, Right. That critical infrastructure providers, they're experts in their specific fields, per se. They're great at keeping us safe or healthy or providing us energy resources, things we need. Communication is extremely important to them, but it's not one of their core businesses. And to be honest, they really don't want to deal with it. In some cases, it's like a necessary evil of sorts. So, we do what we do best, which is provide the best wireless transport network so they can actually do their jobs. That's kind of like why we say, focus on your mission and we will take care of the rest.
All right. So leave it to the expert. Makes total sense. Like when I get sick, I wouldn't want to treat myself. I go to the doctor. OK, thank you for shining a light on that. It's been so much clearer now, what we can offer to this very specific and important industry segment, critical infrastructure. And this whole topic is really fascinating and so important to, to be honest, each and every one of us. So, Jimmy, thank you so much again for being here. And be sure that I'll be back to pick your brain.
Perfect well, Dahlit, again thanks for having me and looking forward to continuing the conversations with you.
And we'll do that very soon. Thank you so much for joining us in the Backhaul Lounge. And please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. And I'll see you soon.
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