11 June 2010 – Telemedia, South Africa’s leading satellite uplink service provider has chosen Nevion to provide HD connectivity to SuperSport studios during the FIFA World Cup 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa, using its Flashlink fiber optic technology. Nevion, a leading video transport solutions provider for broadcasters, service providers and government entities worldwide, will offermission-critical fiber optical transmission feeding uncompressed HD content between Telemedia Teleport and SuperSport’s editing studios.
Flashlink installations started towards the end of 2009 and all applications were rigorously tested for interoperability. The project took three months to complete - two months from initial discussions to ordering of the equipment and another month for testing, to make sure that all parties were pleased with the quality.
“We chose Flashlink for all our mission-critical HD applications because of its reliability, low CAPEX and OPEX, and more importantly because it has the world’s lowest carbon footprint in the industry,” said Peter Bretherick, president of Telemedia. “Nevion products are resistant, which is integral for this project, especially with the high temperatures in South Africa and the likelihood of electrical interference. They also offer excellent support, so we know we’re in good hands.”
Based on Telemedia’s requirements and network availability, Flashlink was the best fit for the project as video could be transported in real-time without loss of video quality. Telemedia will now be able to effectively downlink video feeds from FIFA, decode them to HD-SDI, then use Flashlink to transmit the feeds on a fiber network to SuperSport’s studios 15 kilometres away.
“We were delighted to be approached by Telemedia for such a large project,” said Ebby John, sales director, Nevion. “The easy scalability of the Flashlink solutions has enabled Telemedia to grow the network very quickly and, we hope that with our solutions, they can reach the whole of South Africa with a world-class video broadcast fiber network. SuperSport has also been very pleased with the system because of its reliability and performance.”
Telemedia is currently expanding the existing system to reach more production houses and television broadcasting facilities.
“Those that have already joined our growing fiber ring throughout Johannesburg are all very impressed with the product and will continue using and growing their own infrastructure with Nevion solutions,” continued Bretherick.
