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EBU: BUILDING THE FUTURE WITH THE SEAMLESS SWITCH
BY GEORGE JARRETT
Antonio Arcidiacono, EBU director of technology and innovation, believes that the return of the face-to-face sharing of ideas and initiatives that IBC offers will be: “Important for our return to a new age of growth. We should not hide behind the diffi culties.” Asked if 5G multicast broadcasting will be the saviour of public service media, he looked fi rst at 5G-MAG’s progress since launching at IBC2018. “I am very proud that despite the diffi culties of Covid we have an organisation of almost 50 members, including Verizon, Qualcomm, LG, Huawei, Sennheiser and satellite companies, in addition to the broadcasters that dominated at the beginning,” he says. “One key point at the start was that there were no chipsets available that could be used to go from broadcast to unicast to multicast in a seamless way, but from next year Qualcomm will offer a new set of chips that will embed this capability.”
“Huawei will be doing the same implementation at the
Winter Olympics in Beijing, with its HiSilicon, so we are now able to build the future with that seamless switch,” he adds.
The potential clever spectrum management for 5G
broadcast has triggered ambitions for a greener future, but how does Arcidiacono see this happening? “The green requirement is served when you follow the laws of physics and you exploit them in the right way. The combination of a solution that is able to deliver broadcast and multicast content to very large audiences, and the use of unicast where you serve personalised content for individuals and small groups, is structurally what makes the delivery system greener,” he says.
When it comes to serving territories, the multi-layer
approach is the best solution for green delivery. “When you go to 100% of the population combine this with a solution like satellite. In cars you could have a 5G gateway that will be terrestrial and satellite, and when
you drive out of suburban areas this will be covered by satellite,” says Arcidiacono. “So, you are covering 100% of the territory with a sustainable and guaranteed quality of service.”
THE NEED FOR MORE TALENT The media industry, bar the skill shortages, took the pandemic as a massive green light, he believes: “It has been an accelerator. The resistance to change has been wiped out by the need to be effi cient and fast: this has been extremely evident on the production side.” “All of us at the EBU were working alongside our membership on deploying IP-based remote production, and although the plan was to develop this in the next 3-5
years, it happened overnight,” adds Arcidiacono. “The skills issues are a bit of both in terms of poor training options and a dire lack of talent. The reality in this transition is that the technology is evolving quicker than the people are able to evolve. Training has been accelerating recently but we need to improve it far more. The other element that is fundamental is that need for more talent. There is huge skills demand in AI, IP-based infrastructures, cloud-based services and data science, so we have to proactively help the universities to create a larger set of people able to manage these sectors. “We should be at the crossroad between what is feasible technically with this IT system for media and what is achievable from the creative point of view.”
BCE BRINGS GREEN ENERGY TO TRANSMISSION SITES PUBLISH
BCE – Broadcasting Center Europe BY DAVID FOX
BCE, in partnership with energy supplier Enovos and RTL Group, has opened Luxembourg’s largest ground-based photovoltaic power plant on two areas of land used for RTL’s transmitters. The project has been carried out over three years and involved installing 29,719 photovoltaic panels at BCE/
RTL’s transmission sites have gone green with 29,719 solar panels
CLT-UFA’s transmission sites in Beidweiler and Junglinster. The installation will produce about 10.5GWh electricity per year and will be able to cover the needs of more than 2,800 households, almost 11,000 people.
The site has been built so that grass can still grow underneath the solar panels (which are semi-transparent and can create energy on both sides using light refl ected from the ground), and the area can be grazed by
sheep. The panels have been installed on metal poles with no concrete used, so that the site can be returned to greenery with no lasting consequences in the future. Frederic Lemaire, CEO, BCE, said: “This achievement is the result of three years of remarkable work, based on a sustainable partnership approach between Enovos and BCE, thus supporting the Luxembourg government’s desire to commit to sustainable, ecological solutions, both for the concrete and immediate benefi t of the populations but in compliance
Arcidiacono: “Resistance to change has been wiped out by the need to be effi cient and fast”
with the global Climate Agenda.” Green energy should also mean biodiversity, as Anouk Hilger, head of renewable energies, Enovos, said: “If the presence of underground wiring around the [broadcast] antennas does not allow any agricultural or industrial exploitation of the land, it is nevertheless particularly suitable for the installation of photovoltaic panels. To preserve the fauna and fl ora, we have carried out numerous studies, mounted the panels by limiting the trenches and set up a grazing system to limit as much as possible any unnatural element in the meadow.”
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