Delivering high-quality live broadcasts across a country with remote, mountainous regions can present unique challenges to broadcasters like Medcom, a leading Panamanian media company. Medcom broadcasts content across three open television channels, three cable TV channels, and three radio stations, but they needed a backup method to distribute their signal to remote locations in case their microwave network was not available. This blog post details how they achieved reliable signal distribution with an innovative solution using Haivision SRT Gateways and Starlink satellite technology.
The Challenge:
Medcom relies on microwave links for their primary signal transmission. However, they wanted to explore alternative solutions for backup and potentially wider coverage. Ultimately, the goal was to deliver a reliable broadcast signal to geographically remote sites across Panama. This solution needed to act as a cost-effective backup and extension of their existing microwave network.
Medcom had considered a few options as a backup to its existing digital microwave network. The first would be implementing a new digital microwave or satellite network across its nine broadcast transmission stations. This would be an expensive undertaking based on equipment and services costs and the difficulty in installing equipment in some of the broadcaster’s more remote transmission stations.
The second option was to leverage low-orbit satellite internet access using the Starlink network.
The Solution
Medcom’s initial trials with the Starlink system proved successful. Initially, they used the Starlink constellation of satellites for high-speed internet connections at its remote broadcast stations across Panama which are typically hard to get to and usually do not have access to reliable internet.
Then, Medcom began using Starlink as a backup to its microwave network to distribute IP video (including content for its live TV broadcast channels, movies, interviews, and news) from the Medcom headend and main broadcast center to Medcom’s remote sites across Panama.
To distribute IP video through the Starlink satellite network, Medcom turned to Haivision’s SRT Gateways and the SRT video streaming protocol. Haivision SRT Gateway, critical to their backup broadcast distribution plan, offered a highly scalable and adaptable broadcast solution for secure live video routing across the internet. By serving as a network bridge and providing real-time IP protocol conversion, SRT Gateway is providing Medcom with cost-effective live video distribution to its more than nine transmission sites based across Panama.
The Result
With the SRT Gateway and Starlink solution, Medcom eliminated the need to build a new microwave or satellite network and instead, with a significantly lower investment, created an alternative video transmission path to their existing microwave links, ensuring uninterrupted service.
The combined solution of Haivision SRT Gateways and Starlink provided Medcom with several benefits, including cost-effectiveness, a reliable backup system, and compatibility with its single-frequency network (SFN). The solution delivers a broadcast-quality signal at low latency while maintaining seamless signal reception across Panama’s diverse geography.
Furthermore, some of Medcom’s locations are extremely remote, with no other form of reception possible other than satellite links. One of these stations, Volcan Baru, can only be accessed during the day and takes about four hours with off-road vehicles to reach it. The Starlink and Haivision solution makes it possible for even this extremely remote location to receive video transmissions despite the geographic and infrastructure challenges.
“In addition to gaining immense cost savings by using high-speed internet for our video transmission network,” said Mohamed Shalabi, Engineering Manager, Medcom. “The benefits of the Haivision and Starlink alternative give us the same signal quality for our viewers without the latency of other digital links.”
Looking Ahead
Medcom’s success with this solution has led them to consider expanding its use. They plan to explore SRT Gateways for redundant transmission paths and potentially even as a replacement for their aging microwave network in the future.
