Analysis of the Market Development Status of Optical Terminals in the Security Surveillance Industry

Video optical terminals have been in the Chinese market for over 20 years. The earliest applications of video optical terminals were mainly concentrated in industries with better funding, urgent demand for video services, and higher transmission quality requirements, such as public security, military, and government sectors. The earliest fiber optic lines were mostly multimode, with transmission distances generally limited to only 2 km, poor transmission quality, and susceptibility to interference. With the proliferation of single-mode fiber and optical terminal technology, transmission distances can easily reach 30–40 km. Currently, video optical terminal equipment has basically achieved single-mode transmission, and multimode optical components have largely been discontinued. To accommodate multimode fiber cables laid in earlier years, some optical terminals are equipped with internal single-mode/multimode adaptive circuits to facilitate transmission over multimode fiber.

The emergence of Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) technology has greatly advanced analog optical terminals in terms of transmission capacity and transmission modes. In a conventional single-core fiber (e.g., G.652), eight different wavelengths—1470nm, 1490nm, 1510nm, 1530nm, 1550nm, 1570nm, 1590nm, and 1610nm—can be transmitted simultaneously. Each wavelength band can further time-division multiplex 1–10 video channels, expanding from one or two optical bands to seven or eight optical bands over a single fiber. A single fiber can transmit more audio, video, and data signals. However, due to the inherent limitations of analog technology, the more channels transmitted over a single fiber, the greater the debugging difficulty and the higher the possibility of inter-channel interference, creating a significant bottleneck for analog optical terminal development. With the advancement of broadband digital optical transmission component technology and digital video technology, digital optical terminals began entering China in 2001. Digital processing completely resolved the channel interference issues of analog optical terminals. Digital optical terminals can achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of 67 dB, far exceeding the 50 dB of analog systems, resulting in very high signal transmission quality. Digital optical terminals can now transmit 128 channels of uncompressed video over a single fiber, while also incorporating Ethernet, telephone voice, and other signals, greatly enriching the types of signals transmitted by optical terminals. The increased transmission capacity improves fiber bandwidth utilization, reduces transmission system costs, and enhances cost-effectiveness. After several years of development, digital optical terminals gradually replaced analog optical terminals, and by 2007, they had captured the vast majority of the optical terminal market.

With the rapid development of urban transportation and highway construction in China, the requirements for equipment in surveillance systems have become increasingly stringent. Fiber optic transmission, with its advantages of large bandwidth, long transmission distances, and anti-interference capabilities, has been widely adopted. Due to its numerous transmission advantages, coupled with surging market demand in recent years and significantly reduced fiber cable costs, optical terminals have entered a relatively healthy industrial development trajectory. Around 2006, with the launch of the "Safe City" initiative, optical terminals became almost a standard configuration, ushering in a "golden age" for optical terminal manufacturers. Currently, Safe City projects, urban intelligent transportation, highways, and urban rail transit projects constitute the primary markets for optical terminals.

Currently, the prices of optical terminals vary considerably due to differences in application fields, product quality, brand, and service. In industrial video surveillance sectors such as highways, petroleum, and petrochemicals, where requirements for product quality, brand, and service are high, relatively few manufacturers can enter the market, and prices are therefore comparatively higher. In other security surveillance application areas, however, there is greater price sensitivity. Taking the 1V1D optical terminal product as an example, prices in the highway sector may exceed RMB 1,000, while in general security applications, prices may drop to around RMB 500, and some products can even be found online for around RMB 200.

Around 2005, market demand for optical terminals began to surge. With the rapid development of optical terminal technology and the increasing prevalence of applications, the entry barrier for video optical terminal production and sales became progressively lower. A large number of small workshop-style companies began selling imitation products on the market. These products are mostly crudely manufactured, of poor quality, and have extremely short service lives, disrupting the normal production and sales order of the domestic optical terminal industry. Irregular market practices and vicious price competition have affected the healthy development of the industry. On the other hand, with the joint participation of both large and small optical terminal manufacturers, the market share of domestic optical terminal enterprises has continued to rise, foreign brands' presence in the domestic market has begun to shrink, and domestic optical terminals have also started to be exported in large quantities.

Nationwide, five provinces and municipalities—Beijing, Guangdong (primarily Shenzhen and Guangzhou), Hubei, Zhejiang, and Shanghai—are the main production bases for domestic video optical terminals. Currently, the usage ratio of cameras to optical terminals is approximately 200:1, and the market size for optical terminals and related communication supporting products is around RMB 1.6 billion. Video optical terminals have been in the Chinese market for over 20 years. The earliest applications of video optical terminals were mainly concentrated in industries with better funding, urgent demand for video services, and higher transmission quality requirements, such as public security, military, and government sectors. The earliest fiber optic lines were mostly multimode, with transmission distances generally limited to only 2 km, poor transmission quality, and susceptibility to interference. With the proliferation of single-mode fiber and optical terminal technology, transmission distances can easily reach 30–40 km. Currently, video optical terminal equipment has basically achieved single-mode transmission, and multimode optical components have largely been discontinued. To accommodate multimode fiber cables laid in earlier years, some optical terminals are equipped with internal single-mode/multimode adaptive circuits to facilitate transmission over multimode fiber.

The emergence of Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) technology has greatly advanced analog optical terminals in terms of transmission capacity and transmission modes. In a conventional single-core fiber (e.g., G.652), eight different wavelengths—1470nm, 1490nm, 1510nm, 1530nm, 1550nm, 1570nm, 1590nm, and 1610nm—can be transmitted simultaneously. Each wavelength band can further time-division multiplex 1–10 video channels, expanding from one or two optical bands to seven or eight optical bands over a single fiber. A single fiber can transmit more audio, video, and data signals. However, due to the inherent limitations of analog technology, the more channels transmitted over a single fiber, the greater the debugging difficulty and the higher the possibility of inter-channel interference, creating a significant bottleneck for analog optical terminal development. With the advancement of broadband digital optical transmission component technology and digital video technology, digital optical terminals began entering China in 2001. Digital processing completely resolved the channel interference issues of analog optical terminals. Digital optical terminals can achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of 67 dB, far exceeding the 50 dB of analog systems, resulting in very high signal transmission quality. Digital optical terminals can now transmit 128 channels of uncompressed video over a single fiber, while also incorporating Ethernet, telephone voice, and other signals, greatly enriching the types of signals transmitted by optical terminals. The increased transmission capacity improves fiber bandwidth utilization, reduces transmission system costs, and enhances cost-effectiveness. After several years of development, digital optical terminals gradually replaced analog optical terminals, and by 2007, they had captured the vast majority of the optical terminal market.

With the rapid development of urban transportation and highway construction in China, the requirements for equipment in surveillance systems have become increasingly stringent. Fiber optic transmission, with its advantages of large bandwidth, long transmission distances, and anti-interference capabilities, has been widely adopted. Due to its numerous transmission advantages, coupled with surging market demand in recent years and significantly reduced fiber cable costs, optical terminals have entered a relatively healthy industrial development trajectory. Around 2006, with the launch of the "Safe City" initiative, optical terminals became almost a standard configuration, ushering in a "golden age" for optical terminal manufacturers. Currently, Safe City projects, urban intelligent transportation, highways, and urban rail transit projects constitute the primary markets for optical terminals.

Currently, the prices of optical terminals vary considerably due to differences in application fields, product quality, brand, and service. In industrial video surveillance sectors such as highways, petroleum, and petrochemicals, where requirements for product quality, brand, and service are high, relatively few manufacturers can enter the market, and prices are therefore comparatively higher. In other security surveillance application areas, however, there is greater price sensitivity. Taking the 1V1D optical terminal product as an example, prices in the highway sector may exceed RMB 1,000, while in general security applications, prices may drop to around RMB 500, and some products can even be found online for around RMB 200.

Around 2005, market demand for optical terminals began to surge. With the rapid development of optical terminal technology and the increasing prevalence of applications, the entry barrier for video optical terminal production and sales became progressively lower. A large number of small workshop-style companies began selling imitation products on the market. These products are mostly crudely manufactured, of poor quality, and have extremely short service lives, disrupting the normal production and sales order of the domestic optical terminal industry. Irregular market practices and vicious price competition have affected the healthy development of the industry. On the other hand, with the joint participation of both large and small optical terminal manufacturers, the market share of domestic optical terminal enterprises has continued to rise, foreign brands' presence in the domestic market has begun to shrink, and domestic optical terminals have also started to be exported in large quantities.

Nationwide, five provinces and municipalities—Beijing, Guangdong (primarily Shenzhen and Guangzhou), Hubei, Zhejiang, and Shanghai—are the main production bases for domestic video optical terminals. Currently, the usage ratio of cameras to optical terminals is approximately 200:1, and the market size for optical terminals and related communication supporting products is around RMB 1.6 billion. Video optical terminals have been in the Chinese market for over 20 years. The earliest applications of video optical terminals were mainly concentrated in industries with better funding, urgent demand for video services, and higher transmission quality requirements, such as public security, military, and government sectors. The earliest fiber optic lines were mostly multimode, with transmission distances generally limited to only 2 km, poor transmission quality, and susceptibility to interference. With the proliferation of single-mode fiber and optical terminal technology, transmission distances can easily reach 30–40 km. Currently, video optical terminal equipment has basically achieved single-mode transmission, and multimode optical components have largely been discontinued. To accommodate multimode fiber cables laid in earlier years, some optical terminals are equipped with internal single-mode/multimode adaptive circuits to facilitate transmission over multimode fiber.

The emergence of Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) technology has greatly advanced analog optical terminals in terms of transmission capacity and transmission modes. In a conventional single-core fiber (e.g., G.652), eight different wavelengths—1470nm, 1490nm, 1510nm, 1530nm, 1550nm, 1570nm, 1590nm, and 1610nm—can be transmitted simultaneously. Each wavelength band can further time-division multiplex 1–10 video channels, expanding from one or two optical bands to seven or eight optical bands over a single fiber. A single fiber can transmit more audio, video, and data signals. However, due to the inherent limitations of analog technology, the more channels transmitted over a single fiber, the greater the debugging difficulty and the higher the possibility of inter-channel interference, creating a significant bottleneck for analog optical terminal development. With the advancement of broadband digital optical transmission component technology and digital video technology, digital optical terminals began entering China in 2001. Digital processing completely resolved the channel interference issues of analog optical terminals. Digital optical terminals can achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of 67 dB, far exceeding the 50 dB of analog systems, resulting in very high signal transmission quality. Digital optical terminals can now transmit 128 channels of uncompressed video over a single fiber, while also incorporating Ethernet, telephone voice, and other signals, greatly enriching the types of signals transmitted by optical terminals. The increased transmission capacity improves fiber bandwidth utilization, reduces transmission system costs, and enhances cost-effectiveness. After several years of development, digital optical terminals gradually replaced analog optical terminals, and by 2007, they had captured the vast majority of the optical terminal market.

With the rapid development of urban transportation and highway construction in China, the requirements for equipment in monitoring systems have become increasingly stringent. Due to the advantages of large bandwidth, long transmission distance, and strong anti-interference capability, optical fiber transmission has been widely adopted. Optical transceivers, benefiting from their numerous transmission advantages and the surge in market demand in recent years, coupled with significantly reduced optical cable costs, have entered a relatively healthy development trajectory. Since the "Safe City" initiative began around 2006, optical transceivers have become almost standard equipment, ushering in a "golden age" for optical transceiver manufacturers. Currently, Safe City projects, urban intelligent transportation, highways, and urban rail transit projects constitute the primary markets for optical transceivers.

At present, the prices of optical transceivers vary considerably due to differences in application fields, product quality, brand, and service. In industrial video surveillance sectors such as highways, petroleum, and petrochemicals, where high demands are placed on product quality, brand, and service, relatively few manufacturers can enter the market, resulting in higher prices. In contrast, other security surveillance application fields are more price-sensitive. Taking the 1V1D optical transceiver as an example, its price can exceed RMB 1,000 in the highway sector, while in general security applications it may drop to around RMB 500, and prices as low as RMB 200 can even be found online.

Around 2005, market demand for optical transceivers began to surge. With the rapid development of optical transceiver technology and the increasing prevalence of applications, the entry barrier for video optical transceiver production and sales has become increasingly low. A large number of small workshop-style companies began selling imitation products on the market. Most of these products are crudely manufactured, of poor quality, and have extremely short service lives, disrupting the normal production and sales order of the domestic optical transceiver industry. Non-standard market practices and vicious price competition have adversely affected the healthy development of the industry. On the other hand, with the joint participation of both large and small optical transceiver manufacturers, the market share of domestic enterprises has continued to rise, foreign brands have seen their presence in the domestic market shrink, and domestic optical transceivers have also begun to be exported in large quantities.

Nationwide, five provinces and municipalities—Beijing, Guangdong (primarily Shenzhen and Guangzhou), Hubei, Zhejiang, and Shanghai—are the main production bases for domestic video optical transceivers. Currently, the usage ratio of cameras to optical transceivers is approximately 200:1, and the market size for optical transceivers and related communications supporting products is around RMB 1.6 billion. At present, domestic video optical transceiver manufacturers can be classified into three categories. The first category consists of communications enterprises that establish themselves on strong optical communications technology. These companies have solid technical foundations, and most are medium-sized (with annual sales of around RMB 50 million). This category also includes communications manufacturers that operate video optical transceivers as a secondary business, and they are the core enterprises of this sub-industry. The second category comprises larger comprehensive video surveillance manufacturers in the security industry, where video optical transceivers are merely one link in their product chain. These enterprises are larger in scale and possess stronger overall technical capabilities, with the proportion of video optical transceivers in their output value varying considerably. The third category consists of processing-type enterprises, which are the most numerous. Due to the low technical threshold of the optical transceiver industry, one or two design and development personnel who have left optical communications companies can establish an enterprise, assembling and producing video optical transceivers in a small workshop manner. Video optical transceivers are their primary products, and imitation products are prevalent among such enterprises.

From the current industry landscape, optical transceivers have just entered the mature stage. With the continuous expansion of the security industry, the overall optical transceiver market is expected to maintain steady growth in the coming years.