GlobeCast — Vancouver Victory (SatBroadcasting™)

The Vancouver Winter Olympics were beamed to the world via the resources of GlobeCast Australia, in HD and SD, on multiple simultaneous channels. GlobeCast Australia, in consultation with Olympic Broadcast Services and Sky New Zealand, crafted a solution that would deliver Sky NZ’s unilateral needs, whie establishing a successful platform for onward distribution to Europe, Asia and the Americas — to more than 50 takers in all, major broadcasters such as ESPN, European Broadcasting Union and Asia Broadcasting Union members, and to sports agencies such as IMG.

GlobeCast Australia was moving an Olympic News Channel feed non-stop as well as live coverage of the various events. In all, it was an 8 channel multiplex. Project Director for the bid and delivery was GCA Commercial Director Andrew Nealon while the Project Managers were DSNG Director Greg Littrich — on location with a team —- and Operations Manager Peter Doueihi in the GlobeCast Australia Broadcast Centre in Sydney. The team put in place two completely diverse fibre routes from Vancouver to Sydney, one with SingTel and one with TATA. In addition, the teleport, fibre and satellite resources of GlobeCast Australia were employed. And a specific lease was taken on AsiaSat 5 to supplement GlobeCast Australia’s permanent lease on AS5. The incoming fibre signals were being turned in the broadcast center to AS5 and back to the northern hemisphere on fibre.

Planning for the event including not only fiber redundancy arrangements, but also a Disaster Recovery scenario involving transmitting via DSNG units direct from the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Vancouver in the event of a critical failure at any crucial point in the network delivery plan. This DR plan was not required. Once equipment selection was made, three equipment racks were designed to order and accommodated the equipment into the desired configuration. The system was soak-tested for a further few weeks before shipment. During construction, consideration was given to size and weight as once complete the entire system was to be shipped via air freight to Vancouver. The first two of the GlobeCast Australia 4-man crew arrived in Vancouver on January 27th and set about re-connecting the racks and equipment. All equipment powered-up without failure, so contingency time was used for additional testing and triple-checks prior to the full end-to-end fibres and satellite leases becoming operational on 7th February for successful delivery of the Games.