{Satellite News 05-18-10} With the 2010 FIFA World Cup less than a month away, satellite companies are preparing to play their part in delivering content from South Africa to the rest of the world.
    Many industry analysts were worried that fiber telecom IP services would push satellite out of World Cup delivery participation, illustrated by Media Broadcast’s selection of Telkom SA to deliver content via high-speed fiber-optic infrastructure. However, Aidan Baigrie, business development executive for Seacom, whose company was contracted deliver content from Africa to Europe via an undersea cable and was named satellite’s major threat in Africa, believes the World Cup will demonstrate the way broadcasters can combine satellite and fiber delivery.
    “We get asked a lot if satellite is dead now that fiber has come into the country. The answer to that is that in a continent with such a diverse geographical layout, there is always a market for satellite, because laying fiber is a very expensive and challenging task. I think what South Africa is doing quite cleverly for the World Cup is using those two in harmony. Fiber will be the core network providing the broadband infrastructure, but a satellite infrastructure has also been set-up to provide a fully redundant solution. We have got 10 stadiums in nine host cities, and each one of those will be provided with satellite equipment,” said Baigrie.
    The 2010 World Cup’s location in Africa, presents unique challenges for broadcasters, as well as opportunities for satellite. ITV, one of the biggest broadcasters in the United Kingdom and World Cup rights-holder will work side-by-side with satellite as part of a complex network to deliver a “massively complicated world event which means that the technical planning had to start almost before the last tournament has ended,” according to Roger Pearce, technical director of ITV Sport. “The major technical challenges are always procuring the means to transmit your program — mainly via satellite and fiber from remote locations — and putting together the technical facilities in the International Broadcast Center (IBC) and venues in a country so far from our base in the United Kingdom. South Africa definitely has its challenges, in particular the potential lack of available ad hoc facilities in the face of huge worldwide demand and the risk factor in building a lot of the technical systems, especially for this tournament.”
    Pearce said ITV will have domestic Ku-band capacity in South Africa and roving TES Reporter units (satellite newsgathering units that work with a reporter and cameraman for live and tape feeds) along with C-band and fiber to delivery broadcasts to the United Kingdom. “We have to be careful to keep path latency to a minimum to avoid embarrassing delays in two-way interviews from remote locations, something that is often asked for by sports producers. We, therefore, intend to stay with MPEG-2 compression. Satellite technology is the backbone of sports coverage and will continue to be so as more services can be provided by IP.”
One of Pearce’s main concerns for ITV’s coverage is lack of bandwidth, since it will be in demand by multiple broadcasters. “All suppliers are warning of a bandwidth shortage, but I would like to think that the satellite companies will rise to the challenge and find ways to up the ad hoc capacity available,” he said.
    France Telecom subsidiary GlobeCast, which operates a secure global satellite and fiber video transport network supporting World Cup transmission, hopes to provide satellite industry solutions to the bandwidth problem. The company is providing multiple unilateral feeds and offering rights-holding broadcasters, such as ITV, dedicated HD and SD uplink and downlink paths available to and from the International Broadcast Center’s (IBC’s) satellite dish farm in Johannesburg for end-to-end delivery of the matches and associated content. GlobeCast said it also was contracted by an unnamed European Broadcaster to build and manage a studio and stand-up position with fibre links into the IBC.
    GlobeCast also will provide HD and SD SNG trucks and fly-aways, international and domestic fibre links, studios, camera crews and playout for both domestic and international delivery via satellite and fibre for broadcasters outside of the IBC, including SVT, Sky Italia, Mediaset, RAI, Softbank, Korea Telecom, TV Asahi, Fox Australia and RCTI.
    GlobeCast’s World Cup satellite network includes more than 300Mhz of sold satellite capacity on Intelsat’s IS-709, Eutelsat’s W7, W3A and more than 1300MB of redundant, networked SDH fiber connectivity over the six week period. GlobeCast has also secured 11 live stand-up positions – including views of the stadiums in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Rustenburg, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, Polokwane, George, Durban and Pretoria as well as city views of Johannesburg and Cape Town. GlobeCast is expecting to be providing feed points at as many as 50 of the 64 games.
    Net Insight was contracted expand GlobeCast’s media contribution network and provide technology to handle GlobeCast’s services. The expanded network will handle a large amount of uncompressed and compressed video channels using HD-SDI, SD-SDI, ASI and Ethernet.
    Intelsat will also employ its terrestrial network, IntelsatONE, launched in April, to broadcast the 2010 FIFA World Cup worldwide with more than 700 MHz of satellite capacity on seven satellites from the event locations. The network’s terrestrial architecture consists of an IP/MPLS-based network, fiber, teleports and points of presence powered by Cisco Systems. 
    The operator is a veteran of world sporting event distribution, delivering both the Olympic Games and the World Cup since the 1960s. Tim Jackson, Intelsat’s vice president of media product management, said the operator’s 40-year heritage of covering major global sporting events provides the company with an efficiency advantage. “Early on, satellite was the only transmission means broadcasters had to get the content from the event location to their viewers back home,” said Jackson. “Broadcasters took a single pool feed that was distributed worldwide and added their local commentary prior to broadcasting the event. Today, transmissions of large-scale events have become more sophisticated. Broadcasters around the world are doing their own unilateral feeds. With the Olympics and the World Cup preparations, our customers are currently finalizing their dedicated capacity plans and routing their broadcast transmission plans from the venues in Vancouver and South Africa back to their home markets,” he said.
    Host Broadcast Services (HBS) will work alongside FIFA and satellite companies to ensure the broadcasts do not have problems, but it will be a complex challenge, according to HBS Director of Marketing Daniel Wlochovski. “Satellite has some significant advantages in terms of reliability and ease-of-use to deploy, say compared to fiber-based circuits. Satellite is very reliable. Fiber is reliable, but if something goes, experience shows that it is more difficult to identify where the problem is. Establishing a fiber circuit is a longer story. What is a little bit more difficult in South Africa is that you can’t go further south in Africa. It is cut off from many other regions of the world. We have to address that, not just for telecoms, but, for the organization of the World Cup. There are tremendous logistical challenges. It is difficult to extract the signals out of South Africa because it is remote. It is at the end of a huge continent. There are low-density countries in between South Africa and the rest of the world with low-density telecommunications, so we rely on either satellite solutions or we rely on a limited number of undersea cables, so this is quite unique,” he said.
    Tex Teixeira, head of production at SuperSport, the main World Cup broadcast rights holder, believes that satellite is the only way to broadcast such massive sporting events. “Satellite delivery is extremely reliable. The biggest concern for satellite is if you have weather problems at the venue from which you are originating. This happened in one of the semifinals of Euro 2008, where bad weather caused the live global audience to miss some of the match. For 2010, FIFA will ensure that all venues have redundancy strategy.”
    The other big challenge for the 2010 World Cup is playing the part of debut stage for 3-D TV live broadcasts. SkyLife CEO Mong-Ryong Lee believes the event is a crucial turning point for broadcast technology. “We think World Cup matches and other big sporting events will drive adoption of 3-D television sets and afford opportunities for our affiliates to create value through new product offerings, and our advertisers, who want fresh sponsorship opportunities,” he said.
    The good news for satellite is that it continues to play an important role during a time of significant advancement in broadcasting technology and the competitive entrance of fiber’s market presence. ESPN’s plan to launch a dedicated 3-D network, driven by live sporting event broadcasts like FIFA’s World Cup, is driving business to technology partners. Ericsson CTO Giles Wilson, who also serves as Ericsson’s head of product portfolio and TV solutions, has focused Ericsson’s 3-D partnership with ESPN as a leaping stone to create a robust 3-D market. Wilson believes the biggest threat to the take-up of 3-D is complacency. “If there is one thing that could stall 3-D TV, it’s doing it badly, so we are continuing to invest in doing it right in all points of the content chain to ensure that 3-D TV can be delivered to consumers as soon as possible in the best possible quality. There are characteristics regarding 3-D, which means the compression has to be of a slightly higher quality. There is always the opportunity to do things not so well,” he said.
    Intelsat CEO David McGlade agrees with Wilson. “Broadcasting sporting events in 3-D is extremely difficult. If the cameras are out of sync, you could make some viewers ill. Consumers are going to judge 3-D on its ability to deliver sports. If they don’t get it right, people are going to dismiss it. The technology has to come out strong right away and the World Cup certainly sets the stage for a big opening,” he said.
    ESPN 3-D will showcase the first 2010 FIFA World Cup match on June 11 between South Africa and Mexico in 3-D, with additional 25 FIFA World Cup 2010 matches scheduled for 3-D throughout the tournament.
    ESPN Executive Vice President of Technology Chuck Pagano said he has a ‘gut feeling’ that 3-D’s debut at the World Cup will drive market success and keep the broadcaster ahead of the curve. “We don’t know what the appetite for 3-D will be, but we know that there will be an appetite. My gut feeling is that this will be successful. I don’t have any quantitative studies to back this up, but there are going to be people buying these TV sets, regardless of whether we want it or not. I’ll bet you in three years every new TV set will have 3-D embedded into it. It is no different from HD in that sense.”