NBC TV Deploys Temporary Voice and Data Network for Live Broadcasts from Vatican

NBC News recently employed RAD communications equipment to carry voice and data traffic for the live broadcast of the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Pope John Paul II as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

“The flexibility we’ve gained from using RAD’s solutions has been extremely good for us, especially in this type of overseas broadcast and news environment which calls for rapid deployment of communications networks. We were looking for a quick, reliable solution and we found that in RAD,” states Leonard Venezia, Technical Manager, NBC Network Field Operations.

In order to provide voice connectivity in an immediate and economical manner for the influx of 70 personnel, including reporters from affiliate stations MSNBC and CNBC who joined local NBC News operations in Rome, NBC News installed in Rome a pair of RAD’s Vmux-2100 voice trunking gateways along with a Megaplex-2100 multiplexer that served as a channel bank. The Vmux units enabled the transport of 96 voice channels from NBC’s PBX in New York to Rome across a single T1 satellite link (the unit is capable of providing up to 384 channels on a single T1) and a Megaplex-2100 unit broke out 96 separate telephone extensions. As a result, users in Rome had access to the local PBX dial tone via NBC headquarters in New York, eliminating the cost of international phone calls.

NBC also provided voice and data connectivity for their on-air communications using a pair of Megaplex-2100 multiservice access multiplexers over a T1 satellite link, for conducting live interviews with minimal broadcast delays while maintaining excellent voice quality.

“Just two years ago, we would have needed to coordinate phone access with the Italian telecom service and use satellite phone lines, which are extremely expensive,” says Dan Miller, Communications Engineer, NBC Network Field Operations. Using RAD’s transparent voice compression, NBC was able to cut the facilities costs by 75% by reducing the required number of satellite circuits from four to one.

Pulse Communications, Inc., a RAD partner and nationwide provider of data communications and wide area networking solutions, assisted NBC as the primary sales interface to customize and design the application, and worked closely with NBC in the implementation planning. “Several years ago, NBC began deploying RAD products in preparation for its broadcast of the Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympics,” notes Sal Costantino, Vice President of Pulse Communications. (Read the Case Study about the RAD network NBC installed at the Salt Lake City Olympics.) “By continuing to deploy RAD products for its remote broadcasts, the network has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Essentially, RAD has enabled NBC to replace the conventional method of remote site broadcasting with a much more flexible and cost-efficient solution.” More recently, NBC used RAD’s Vmux to transmit eight T1 lines over Frame Relay from New York City to two locations in New Hampshire to cover the Democratic primary. This saved NBC the cost of installing 120 phone lines at a cost of approximately $100 each.