A short article on Anixter's website speculates that, with the rapid evolution of technology in the IP video surveillance industry, "new compression technologies may be the next breakthrough needed to address video on wide area networks (WANs)."
As noted in the article, "WANs present a challenge when it comes to meeting the bandwidth requirements of network video. In contrast to LAN environments that have connection speeds of 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps, WAN bandwidths are commonly less than 10 Mbps -- typically operating on a T1 (1.544 Mbps) or less. As video applications grow more sophisticated, WAN bandwidth use must also be addressed."