In video surveillance, 5G has emerged as an viable alternative for connectivity. However, various challenges and limitations still remain in 5G. This article looks at some key challenges facing 5G video surveillance, and how they can be overcome.
In video surveillance,
5G has emerged as an viable alternative for connectivity, especially in places where wiring is difficult. However, various challenges and limitations still remain in 5G. This article looks at some key challenges facing 5G video surveillance, and how they can be overcome.
Increasingly, video surveillance is moving towards cellular connectivity, for which 4G and 5G are widely used today. Compared to 4G, 5G offers faster upload speed, wider bandwidth and lower latency. This makes 5G especially suitable for remote-area and mobility-based projects, where video transmission over wired infrastructure is difficult, if not impossible.
“Verticals that can benefit significantly from 5G-enabled surveillance include railway coaches and bogies, remote site surveillance, construction projects, mining locations, perimeter security installations, remote utility assets such as substations, solar and wind farms, highway monitoring systems, and hilly or geographically challenging regions,” said Sumit Aggarwal, Founder of i2V Systems. “5G is particularly valuable in applications that require high-quality video transmission and advanced analytics such as face recognition and ANPR/LPR, especially in locations where traditional wired connectivity is unavailable or impractical.”
Public vs. private networks
Today, 5G video surveillance projects mostly use public cellular networks. Yet, private 5G networks are also gaining ground due to their various benefits.
“Most current deployments rely on public cellular networks due to their wide coverage and ease of deployment. However, Frost & Sullivan’s ‘Delivering on the Promise of Private 5G’ highlights increasing interest in private 5G networks among enterprises and mission-critical industries that require greater control over network performance, security, and latency. These include manufacturing, ports, airports, utilities, transportation, and critical infrastructure operators,” said Mehek Mehta, Associate Consultant at Frost & Sullivan.
Challenges in 5G video security
But is 5G the magic cure for video security in difficult-to-wire areas or venues? Not quite, as 5G still has its share of challenges and limitations. Transmission quality and reliability may still suffer in villages or remote areas where signals are weak. Many 5G plans fall back to LTE or 4G when the network becomes unstable or congested.
But most importantly, video surveillance is an upload-intensive operation where video is constantly streamed to the cloud or backend server. This will lead to massive data consumption and incur huge costs.
“While 5G unlocks tremendous possibilities for surveillance, organizations must still address several practical considerations to ensure optimal return on investment. One of the primary concerns is the cost associated with transmitting large volumes of high-resolution video, particularly when continuous cloud streaming is involved. As camera resolutions increase and deployments scale, data consumption can grow significantly if not managed intelligently,” said Aditya Khemka, MD of CP PLUS.
Aggarwal echoes those remarks. “While 5G offers significant advantages, challenges remain around connectivity costs, coverage availability, cybersecurity, dependence on public network infrastructure, and hardware costs. In particular, 5G communication modules are currently more expensive than their 4G counterparts, increasing the overall deployment cost of 5G-enabled camera systems,” he said.
‘Smarter data’ instead of ‘more data’
The solution, then, lies “not in transmitting more data, but in transmitting smarter data,” as Khemka put it. Indeed, only by making the system more intelligent, efficient and manageable can users get the most out of 5G. The way to do that is to combine 5G with the following:
Edge intelligence: With edge AI, the camera will only transmit footage that’s relevant.
“Cameras can process video locally, identify relevant events, and transmit only actionable information instead of continuously streaming all footage to the cloud,” Khemka said. “Our EZ-S35T Camera-based Solar Remote Surveillance Solution exemplifies this approach. By combining solar-powered autonomy, edge intelligence, local storage, and cellular connectivity, the system minimizes bandwidth consumption while maintaining continuous surveillance coverage. This significantly reduces recurring data costs and enhances deployment flexibility in remote environments.”
“Cellular connectivity solves the access problem, but the intelligence built into the cameras takes it a step further. In remote deployments, the real question is whether cameras can surface the right information when something happens and no one is there to see it. Take a construction site after hours: an AI-powered camera that detects a trespasser and notifies the right people in real time changes the outcome in a way that a camera that simply records cannot,” said Pete Pacent, Director of Product Management at Verkada.
Smart compression: Smart and efficient compression technologies also help reduce bandwidth demands. With compression, video streams are captured and encoded at the camera using efficient codecs such as H.265/HEVC or AV1, minimizing data size without significantly compromising quality.
Smart device management: Deploying cameras in remote or mobile locations using 5G is only half the challenge. Making sure they are up and running is the other. “A transit agency managing security across a bus fleet, or a public safety team with trailers spread across a city, faces a constant operational question: how do you maintain uptime and accountability across all of it without constantly sending people into the field,” Pacent notes.
This is where smart device management can come in handy. “Software-first approaches give teams visibility and control across every deployment from a centralized, cloud-based dashboard. As a result, professionals can manage and investigate from any device and at any time. Something as simple as a hard reboot – which once required a costly site visit – can now be done from a laptop or phone. Proactive alerts flag issues like a trailer battery dipping below threshold before they become problems,” Pacent said. “For teams managing security across dozens of distributed sites, that level of remote control changes day-to-day operations significantly.”