A roundup of vendor and operator news from around the globe. Today's edition includes Europe and Asia-Pacific.
UK
BT: BT used AWS Elemental Live video processing to power live streaming broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League soccer final on June 3. The championship events were shown live in the BT Sport application and on YouTube in both 360-degree virtual reality (VR) and 4K UltraHD video.
Last year, BT launched the first live online streaming of the UEFA Europa League and Champions League tournaments with AWS Elemental via YouTube; early this year, the broadcaster began offering its subscribers English Premier League as well as Europa League and Champions League matches using Dolby Atmos surround sound technology. In late May, BT live streamed the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Europa League final in 4K VR.
Sky: Sky and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) have extended their collaboration to include a multi-year digital security agreement to support the expansion of Sky video services across any screen.
As part of the extended agreement, Sky will expand its use of Cisco's video security portfolio, including the VideoGuard Everywhere conditional access (CAS) and digital rights management (DRM) solutions, to secure video distribution to PC and Mac computers, set-top boxes, tablets and other mobile devices. The agreement also includes extending the security solutions to additional Sky entities in Europe, including Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia.
Vietnam
Vietnam Satellite Digital Television (VSTV) has deployed Broadpeak's umbrellaCDN CDN selector. The cloud-based solution is designed to let the video service provider choose among multiple CDNs to select the best one to deliver live OTT content to subscribers based on various criteria and load balancing the traffic.
umbrellaCDN features an analytics tool that gathers and displays information related to the session requests to help the broadcaster determine the number of viewers for specific content in a single platform. All of the session requests are centralized under umbrellaCDN and can be monitored in real time.
Germany
ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN) has started lab testing of the latest features in the G.fast standard, 212 MHz and coordinated dynamic time allocation (cDTA), together with Deutsche Telekom (DT). DT is evaluating the technologies using fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) deployment models allowing the use of existing cable infrastructure within the home.
ADTRAN demonstrated the new 212 MHz G.fast standard, which is designed to double the usable spectrum to allow service providers to deliver gigabit rates over a single copper pair. The tests, leveraging the first commercially available 212 MHz DPU also demonstrated the second phase of DTA. cDTA, like the earlier iDTA feature, is intended to improve G.fast upstream performance by four to five times by dynamically balancing upstream and downstream capacity to match residential traffic patterns in real time. cDTA also expands the applicability of the feature to existing phone wiring.
Australia
ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN) has signed a supply agreement with the National Broadband Network (nbn) in Australia. The executed supply agreement covers software, hardware and services, which includes commitments from both companies to support the ongoing nationwide network rollout.
The two companies have completed a GPON network interoperability proof-of-concept program of work. In addition, ADTRAN IT specialists have been working with nbn's IT team to implement ADTRAN's standards-based, multi-vendor DPU management solution, utilizing an open microservices architecture.