Australian telecommunications and media company Telstra has been announced as a Fox Sports official network partner.
Through Telstra’s distributed production network (DPN), which is an end-to-end IP network custom built for the media industry, Fox Sports will enhance its outside broadcasting model.
Under the agreement, Telstra will connect 29 sports stadiums across Australia to its two central hubs in Sydney and Melbourne.
DPN allows Telstra to produce live broadcasts from afar from the actual event by sending several raw camera feeds, audio and equipment control signals over the network and back to the centralised production hubs.
According to the head of Telstra broadcast services, Trevor Boal, DPN will be fully operational ahead of the 2018 NRL rugby league season, as well as the 2018 AFL Aussie rules season.
He added that the network would support more than 520 live tier-one sporting events each year.
“Telstra’s DPN is designed to help our broadcast customers meet the rapidly growing demand for live content by offering access to our high capacity, low latency, multi-tenant network of scale,” Boal said.
“The deployment of a remote production model in Australia requires a world-class countrywide network to overcome the unique challenges of Australia’s vast and expansive geography. In a world first, multiple channels of uncompressed linear contribution video at the lowest possible latency will be traversing our network from sporting venues up to 3500 kilometres away from the Remote Production Hubs.
“Telstra’s DPN will play a pivotal role in satisfying audience demand for live, high quality, content-rich sporting coverage and we look forward to strengthening our longstanding partnership with Fox Sports to deliver the next evolution of live sport broadcasting.”
Fox Sports’ director of operations and digital, Les Wigan, said: “Fox Sports, in partnership with Telstra and NEP Australia, is proud to be leading the way for the outside broadcast production model of the future. These new hubs will allow us to cover multiple sports from a centralised, revolutionary facility that will deliver the highest quality broadcast to sports fans around the country.”
Previously, Telstra also introduced its Globecam technology, a live, point-of-view miniature wearable camera, into Fox Sports broadcasts.
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