The one year deadline is almost upon US government agencies since Congress had placed a ban on video surveillance and telecommunications equipment manufactured, produced, and sold by Hytera Communications Corp., Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Zhejiang Dahua Technology and all subsidiary/affiliates of these companies. According to an article on Bloomberg, the August 13 deadline will most likely not be met. These brands have been re-branded and white labeled with parts mixed in and sold by Panasonic and Honeywell International Inc, and our government agencies are having a difficult time navigating what equipment they actually have in production. Why the ban? Oh, just the usual backdoors giving unauthorized access to international spies! That and possible peeping toms, I suppose.

These manufacturers didn’t only sell to governments, in fact, they were very popular brands for consumers being sold both online and in national retail stores. A few years ago, if you happened to be on the look out for these types of things, there were countless posts doing their usual online banter of comparing prices and features for cameras and network video recorders of Dahua, Hikvision, and Ubiquiti security cameras. Dahua and Hikvision had always won the argument on price (I wonder why), but Ubiquiti usually got the best reviews on features and security. It may not be a huge concern for you, but have you taken a look at what you may have installed in your homes? We’re pretty glad we decided with the latter for our solutions.

We chose Ubiquiti products for their quality, cloud access, features and aesthetics. All that and they are very active with security and firmware updates. You may find a bundle at a lower cost than Systech Consulting’s surveillance solution, but there’s a good reason we do what we do. When you’re ready for a great solution, we’ll have one ready for you – no strings attached.