IBC 2018 Reflections: PCCW Global’s Alex Berriman on how Console Connect aims to change IT connectivity for live events

Hong Kong-based international telecom company PCCW Global may not have had a specific product or service to roll out at this year’s IBC Show, but it had an important message for the event-production world: the way you approach IT connectivity is due for a change.

PCCW Global’s Alex Berriman: “Monitoring, flexing up and flexing down, and interconnecting: it’s not the traditional way of doing business.”

The company’s newest offering, Console Connect service is a global, software-defined interconnection platform providing direct connectivity to a multitude of locations (PCCW’s backbone connects 3,000 cities across 150 countries). PCCW Global acquired this software from an Australia-based company and is not integrating it into its robust network. The marriage allows the flexibility of dialing up/down high levels of connectivity for a short period of time.

“The idea is that, if you are on our network, you can have a private line, you can flex up 50 MB, 100 MB, 200 MB to a partner, to the cloud, to AWS, to remote offices,” says Alex Berriman, a mobility, security, and digital-solutions expert at PCCW Global. “We did one in Hong Kong. Let’s say you are at a venue and you need to connect to some partners for some SAS services or to a broadcaster for final delivery. You can do that. It is a three-day event so, on a Friday night, you flex up 200 MB, and, on Monday morning, you bring it back down. It saves you a lot of cost and us a lot of manpower as well.”

The service was originally designed for network engineers in a raw IT environment. However, the flexibility of the connectivity unsurprisingly has piqued the interest of event producers for use in delivery, especially in sports.

Instead of leasing connectivity in 24-month contracts, broadcasters can bring connectivity up and down as needed.

Acknowledging that this a cultural change, especially for IT professionals, Berriman notes that the company is investing the time to preach the message. “Monitoring, flexing up and flexing down, and interconnecting: it’s not the traditional way of doing business. It’s finding our value proposition in the market and building a story around it.”

If you are interested in learning more about PCCW Global’s approach to IT connectivity, register to attend SVG’s TranSPORT conference on Oct. 16. The company will offer a Case Study presentation on these services as part of the event’s agenda.