Nextgen extends fibre net to 15 sports venues for PMG (Fox Sports)

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 10:45

IT Industry - Strategy

Nextgen Networks has extended its nationwide fibre optic network to 15 major sporting venues to provide Premier Media Group (PMG, the owner of Fox Sports) with 1Gbps of capacity per venue to transmit video footage of major sporting events.

The two-way IP connectivity will replace one way satellite links operating at a maximum of 60Mbps, enabling PMG to improve the quality of the images its viewers receive, delivering high definition images and opening up the potential for new services. The 1Gbps feeds from the individual venues are consolidated into a 10Gbps feed into PMG's headquarters in Pyrmont, Sydney.

The venues are in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle, Gosford, Canberra, Brisbane and the Gold Coast and include the MCG in Melbourne, Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, AAMI Stadium in Adelaide, Subiaco Oval in Perth and the Etihad stadium in Melbourne (formerly the Telstra Dome).

Nextgen managing director, Phil Sykes, said: "We have provided them with their own dedicated 1Gpbs fibre network, it is a huge step up... We are doing national gigabit per second private network for the video industry. It is probably the first in the country so it is a bit of a landmark."

The network also gives Nextgen the opportunity to target other broadcasters, and telcos. Sykes added: "We now have fibre to these stadiums and will offer a competitive option to other broadcasters. We can make a VPLS instance available for a range of customers. It is a VPLS layer 2 network that is demand driven."

These venues can also be the sources of very high volumes of cellular traffic during major sporting events, presenting Nextgen with the possibility of offering capacity to cellular operators looking to upgrade their backhaul to high capacity IP. Sykes said: "We are already carrying a fair bit of Vodafone's traffic around the country and we continue to build up our relationship with Vodafone. Fibre based connectivity to the towers is something that they put a lot of focus on."

Tony Scanlan, chief technology officer at Premier Media Group, said the new network would be pivotal in providing a technology path for the development of next generation video production, contribution and distribution. "This network will allow us to deliver exceptional video quality with low delay and good performance across our entire contribution and production chain."

He told iTWire that, at present "We use satellite, and in some locations we have access to a Telstra Video Network product. The venues we are looking at [for Nextgen fibre] are those where we use satellite capacity. Normally we would get 9-20MHz which would give us 12 to 60Mbps. Now, from each venue we are looking at bringing back several hundred megabits per second of digital data.

Scanlan said that all network links and associated equipment was installed and operating and would operate in parallel with existing systems for the next few weeks before being brought into service.

Beyond this he said: "There are a whole lot of new features we are looking at, including pushing content out to the venue, and brining content back which could be multiple cameras, or data for the website."