When the dust had settled, it turned out that Riedel Communications had furnished more than 24 tons of communications systems to the 15th Asian Games in Doha/Qatar. All together, the company shipped 77 pallets of gear to the event – the biggest multisport event outside the summer Olympics and the largest sporting event ever held in the Middle East.
Luckily, a team of 65 Riedel engineers were on-site to install and operate the equipment ensuring a smoothly run operation and a successful project that networked all the venues and covered sports and organisational communications as well as the local locations.
Riedel dispatched over 6,000 digital TETRA radios from market leader Motorola to Doha that were used by DAGOC, the organisation committee for the Asian Games in Quatar, for radio communications at all venues. In close cooperation with its local partner Bond Communications, Riedel also supplied intercoms for all venues.
Based on its successful formula at many international projects including the recent Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Riedel configured an integrated infrastructure consisting of digital intercom matrix systems, digital party-line systems and professional mobile radios to facilitate communications at the individual sports sites. Riedel’s Artist digital intercom matrix functioned as the heart of the installation with 45 Artist 64 mainframes serving as the venue’s intercoms. The intercom matrices managed the signals from the various control panels and radio channels to deliver reliable communications at the push of a button. The venue intercom system enabled not only the hassle-free communications of the organisation committee, but also for referees, scoreboard operators and other sports related personnel. About 100 RiFace radio interfaces connected the wireless and wired communication technologies.
Doha Asian Games Broadcast Services AG (DAGBS), the host broadcast service for the Games who provided the International feed for TV stations all over the world, also used Riedel’s digital intercom matrix Artist for its own communications. DAGBS is a joint-venture of TWI, the world’s biggest independent TV production company and Hostbroadcast Services HBS, a Riedel customer who utilised the company’s systems during the World Cup in Germany. In addition to the Artist systems owned by HBS, international broadcast solutions company Gearhouse Broadcast provided two additional Artist systems for the DAGBS.
Al Jazeera also benefited from the vast capabilities of Riedel’s Artist platform. Al Jazeera’s OB11, which covered the football games in Al-Rayyan stadium, is equipped with a 128 port Artist matrix and Artist 1000 series LED contol panels. “I was really happy working with Riedel’s Artist intercom system for the first time. Its absolutely intuitive to use and I didn’t experience any problems during the games”, stated Carlos Vicente, freelance audio engineer with Al Jazeera for the Asian Games.
In total, Riedel shipped 50 Artist digital intercom systems, 250 intercom control panels, 100 RiFace radio interfaces, 130 Performer digital party-line systems with more than 900 digital intercom beltpacks, 6,000 digital TETRA radios, 500 conventional radios, 7,500 headsets and more than 50 kilometres of cables and fibre.
