HDTV spurs fiber opportunity in broadcast TV industry
Lightwave October, 2006
Author(s) : Meghan Fuller
lw.pennnet.com
Television broadcasters today are spending roughly $9 billion on satellite services, say industry insiders. While the majority of that cost goes directly toward the distribution of broadcast TV via satellite, about $1 billion is used for “contribution,” in which high-bandwidth camera feeds from stadiums, concert halls, and other venues are transported to various production and post-production facilities. A vast majority of this transport could-and should-be done over fiber, say optical equipment vendors. Some service providers have begun to prove them right.
A media transport network comprises two distinct parts: the contribution network and the distribution network. The contribution network connects the sports arenas, convention centers, and other venues with production facilities; it is used to exchange raw video and audio content among broadcasters, news crews, TV stations, and studios before post-production has occurred. By contrast, the distribution network, sometimes known as the forward distribution network, transports broadcast-quality content from the production facility, content owner, or rights owner to intermediary distribution points, such as cable headends, telco IPTV headends, and even satellite uplinks.
While satellite transport is typically used in the forward distribution network and tapes or disks are used to transport content, via courier service, from creation site to production facility, these alternatives increasingly are being replaced with terrestrial fiber-based links. The emergence of high-definition television (HDTV) is driving this migration.
Case study: Broadwing
One carrier that has taken advantage of this opportunity is Broadwing Communications (www.broadwing.com). The company offers media services delivery over what it claims is the largest Dynamic Synchronous Transfer Mode (DTM) network in the world.
Standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), DTM effectively acts like next-generation SONET. But SONET is relatively rigid, offering 1.5-Mbit/sec T1s, 45-Mbit/sec DS3s, and 155-Mbit/sec OC-3s to OC-192s. DTM is also a time-division multiplexed protocol, but it is less rigid, allowing time to be broken into 512-kbit to 1-Gbit increments. Essentially, DTM enables more efficient utilization of the network.
Figure 1. Broadwing's DTM-based media service network handles both contribution, the transport of uncompressed video between remote locations and production facilities, and forward distribution, the transport of video from production facilities to intermediary distribution points.
“The key to it really is that you channelize your optical pipe,” explains Lindgren, whose DTM-based products are used in Broadwing’s network. “From a service perspective, you get a connection, end-to-end, that is always separated from other traffic. You’re always guaranteed that what you put into the network comes out at the other end the same way, more like you have with a telephone service.”
Traditional data networks, by contrast, rely on prioritization within the network, which works fine if you don’t have too much high-priority traffic, says Lindgren. But if you have a network with 80% to 90% high-priority traffic, you will start getting packet loss and large delays. “You can’t have that in a media network,” he notes.
As such, DTM has emerged as “the dream protocol for media applications,” says Jamey Heinze, director of data services at Broadwing. “The Super Bowl, for example, is as mission critical as it gets.”
Since 2004, Broadwing has provided fiber-based transport services in the contribution portion of the value chain, which Heinze says represents “the real low-hanging fruit for us.” He confirms that Broadwing has a fiber connection into most Major League Baseball stadiums and National Basketball Association arenas, with fiber into National Hockey League rinks currently in development.
“Once you are built into a stadium where there’s going to be game after game after game, the cost can really be justified. We were doing upwards of five or six Major League Baseball games a day across our backbone at the end of the season last year,” he recalls, “and that’s growing this year.”
An additional advantage of running fiber directly to major sports arenas, concert halls, and venues is the ability to deliver a range of services via that single connection (see Figure 2). Broadwing’s EventServices platform, for example, enables broadcasters to access long-distance and local voice services, compressed and uncompressed SDTV and HDTV, and high-speed data for large file transfers of graphics and the like.
Figure 2. Thanks to a direct fiber connection in most Major League Baseball stadiums, NBA arenas, and other major venues, Broadwing can deliver voice , video, and data services via a single connection to broadcast crews on location.
Because Broadwing is leveraging a fiber infrastructure, it can easily offer a dedicated service option, “which looks a heck of a lot like a private line,” says Heinze. “We can scale it asymmetrically and give any granularity of speed and 100% quality-of-service guarantee because it’s literally a TDM infrastructure.”
What is more compelling, however, is Broadwing’s occasional use service. Baseball games, for example, last 3 to 4 hours at a time; it does not make sense for a broadcaster to buy a dedicated private line. For this reason, Broadwing allows broadcasters and content-creation entities to purchase service by the hour, the half hour, or in even smaller increments. Broadwing then schedules, provisions, and monitors the service from its television operations center (TOC) in Baltimore, MD.
The second phase in Broadwing’s media services rollout was the forward distribution service, introduced at GlobalComm in June. According to Heinze, both rollouts have been a success, as evidenced by the carrier’s steady growth. In 2004, Broadwing had just four DTM nodes in its network. Today, it has 44 nodes, making it the largest in the world. |
