Globecast has significantly expanded its European fibre backbone – part of the company’s global fibre network GCBN – to 100G in order to satisfy ever-growing bandwidth requirements.
The company is working in partnership with Net Insight, using its technology at POPs and customer sites to ensure maximum quality via very low latency and the tight synchronisation of feeds, which it says is vital in edge processing for remote production.
Globecast is initially upgrading GCBN in Europe – specifically POPs in London, Frankfurt and Paris, with other regions due to follow this year. The company connects the event site to GCBN and then delivers the feed(s) to whomever requires it, be that a physical remote production centre, into the cloud for remote production or any other processing, or direct to a broadcaster.
To ensure low latency and the tight synchronisation of feeds, Globecast is using Net Insight’s Nimbra 1060 core processing technology at relevant points in the network. The technology enables users to align different video feeds in time upon delivery, enabling synchronised playout for use cases such as remote production and primary distribution, said the company. IP-based synchronisation using PTP can be extended over wide area networks, enabling distributed production or remote production in any location.
Globecast is also introducing the concept of Net Centres, which are points of presence at major international datacentres – initially in Paris and London – that operate alongside direct termination at a Globecast Media Centre.
Sebastien Fauzan, director of marketing and business development for sport and live with Globecast, said, “GCBN features in a huge number of projects across contribution, distribution and our media supply chain services. It’s a global Ethernet backbone network, mostly supplied by Globecast parent company Orange and expanding the capacity is crucial given the continued growth in things like remote production and the use of 4K. It empowers our customers to satisfy viewer requirements in an ever more competitive environment.”
