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FIFA’s international broadcast centre served as the brains, alongside Telkom’s next generation network’s brawn, in delivering an unforgettable FIFA world cuptm experience.

When the FIFA World CupTM final draws a viewership of more than 700 million people, and the event has a cumulative audience of more than 26 billion viewers, the one thing that simply has to be done right is the broadcasting. Understanding from the outset the importance of a dedicated facility for FIFA World CupTM broadcasting, Telkom put in place the video contribution infrastructure from the all FIFA World CupTM stadia to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC).

A 30 000m2 facility designed to serve as the central hub of all broadcast activities, the IBC was strategically situated in Nasrec, a virtual stone’s throw away from both Soccer City and Safa House. Utilising a dedicated network to link it to the 10 FIFA World CupTM venues and the more than 500 broadcasters in 214 countries, the IBC has been the hub on which the entire event has turned. Even FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke has stated that there would be “no FIFA World CupTM without the IBC”.

According to Peter Seager, Telkom’s venue manager for the IBC, all the key broadcasters for the event were based at the IBC. These players bought the live feed from Host Broadcast Services (HBS), a FIFA partner. Telkom’s role, meanwhile, was to provide the infrastructure and deliver the broadcast feeds from the stadiums to the IBC and from IBC to the rest of the world.


Delivering broadcast services

“In order to deliver these feeds, we partnered with Media Broadcast South Africa (MBSA). Since broadcasting is not our speciality, we required a partner that could encode the video signal in order to relay it over our network, and then decode it at the IBC,” says Seager.

“FIFA, through HBS, has the cameras at each stadium that take the match footage. This is then converted into a digital signal at the ground and sent to the IBC, where it is converted by MBSA back to a video signal. Match production is then done at the IBC, before the feed is passed on to the Media Rights Licencees (MLRs) for broadcasting.”

Seager says that, especially during the early part of the tournament, there were several games running at once. This meant that the Telkom integration room at the IBC needed to be large, as signals were being received from the stadiums and sent out again at the same time. An enormous amount of equipment therefore had to be put in place at the IBC.

“Also, because there were so many broadcasters requiring so many different services, HBS together with Telkom developed a Rate Card service. By listing the services on offer in a catalogue form, those organisations that were Media Rights Licensees were able to choose the exact services they required.”

By listing the services on offer in a catalogue form, those organisations that were Media Rights Licensees were able to choose the exact services they required.”


HOW IT BEGAN

According to Sy Masoko, Telkom’s National Coordinator: Project Office, Telkom already knew it had the responsibility of being the fixed line ICT provider for FIFA when planning for the FIFA World CupTM began in 2006.

“For this reason, we conducted a gap analysis at the outset, in order to compare what we already had to the FIFA requirements for the tournament. This would enable us to work out exactly what was still needed to meet these requirements. Once all this information was digested, we were able to begin working towards our ultimate goal, which was to deliver the best FIFA World CupTM ever,” he says.

“It was not an easy task. Delivering a total optical network was something that had not yet been achieved in SA. In addition, the geographic distances we had to contend with were enormous when compared to the previous three tournaments. Obviously some of the stadiums were well taken care of – Soccer City and Ellis Park both had major exchanges situated nearby – but in areas like Polokwane, Nelspruit and Rustenburg, far more work was necessary.”

At the same time, states Masoko, it was not a case of building a completely new network. All Telkom had to do was extend existing capability into the stadiums. In other words, he says, much of the work was effectively ‘last mile’ connectivity.


MAKING IT HAPPEN

Seager says that an IT Command Centre was situated at the IBC. This was a partnership between Telkom and Match IT, along with a few other entities, with the goal of monitoring all the services for the FIFA World CupTM, including the stadiums, the various media centres and the IBC itself. The Command Centre was also the interface with the NNOC.

“While the Command Centre provided control, at the infrastructure level we not only installed an optical self-healing network, we also implemented what we call hitless switching. This is a technology that allows for the automatic switching of transmissions to a backup route, without any downtime,” he says.

“While there were hardly any problems, there was one instance where a tractor accidentally damaged a cable near Witbank. However, thanks to the seamless switching to an alternative route, those who were watching the game were not even aware a glitch had occurred.”

Asked about the special skills and expertise required to deliver to FIFA’s exacting requirements, Seager says that both the infrastructure and the abilities were already available.

“We already had the skills and the technologies from the outset, so this was just a case of delivering to another customer’s needs. Obviously we had never previously had experience on a project of this size, so there was still much that we learned. In fact, we had to change our manner of doing business considerably – we were already implementing things before negotiations had even been finalised.”


THE HUMAN FACTOR

Nonku Dlamini, Executive: Government Sales says that for an organisation of Telkom’s skills and experience, the technical solutions presented no problem. She suggests that the biggest challenge the company faced was the long hours that staff had to put in.

“Ultimately, the human factor was our biggest challenge. Everyone worked incredibly tough hours, so our people were often very tired. Any organisation can build in plenty of technical redundancy, but however big you are, there are still only so many people capable of doing the job. Fortunately, there was enormous dedication from the teams working on this event, so we overcame the majority of the fatigue issues,” she says.

Talking about the future, Dlamini says that unlike many large projects, in this instance, the people involved were all Telkom employees, rather than external consultants. This, she says, means that all the skills and expertise developed during the FIFA World CupTM will still be available to the country as we move forward.

“All members of the team were already very skilled individuals. This means that when they couple the knowledge gained at this tournament to their existing skills, those clients we work with in future will gain many benefits. Our people will be able to make more informed and intelligent decisions far quicker, which can only be beneficial to the customer.”

“Dealing with customers is what we do. Meeting their requirements, regardless of how tough these are, is what we always work to achieve. For the IBC solution, FIFA and its entities, Match IT and HBS, needed IT & T Services in a short space of time, but otherwise they were just another customer. Working as a team and through strategic engagement with our partners, the teams from DoC 2010 ICT infrastructure, the City of Johannesburg, 2010 unit and the LOC enabled us to concentrate on doing what we do best and everything else fell into place,” concludes Dlamini.

C O N T A C T

For more information, please contact Ms Nonku Dlamini,
Executive: Government Sales
Telkom SA Ltd

Tel: +27 12 680 7172
Fax: +27 12 680 7415
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: www.telkom.co.za