Qualcomm keeping a keen eye on sports after successful Bundesliga LTE trial
Hot on the heels of its well-publicised collaboration with Vodafone and Ericsson on the first live test of LTE broadcast from the home of German Bundesliga team Borussia Moenchengladbach, Qualcomm is continuing to make connections in the sports world with its Snapdragon mobile technology.
February saw a significant milestone in the roll-out of LTE Broadcast technology when Vodafone became the first European carrier to conduct live tests. Collaborating with Ericsson, Samsung and Qualcomm, Vodafone selected the home stadium of German Bundesliga team Borussia Moenchengladbach for the trial, which was conducted on the mobile service provider’s commercial radio network. This was connected on the 800 MHz band to an Ericsson core network at its Eurolab R&D centre in Aachen. The devices used in the demo of LTE Broadcast – which, says Vodafone, may soon be available in further stadia – were based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with LTE Broadcast Services Middleware.
Speaking to SVG Europe, Qualcomm director of marketing Peter Carson confirms that these are exciting times for its Snapdragon platform, which has lately witnessed the introduction of the 801 processor to provide high quality imaging with support for larger, faster camera sensors, improved image post-processing and enhanced overall performance – a feature-set that has obvious positive implications for the delivery of sports content via mobile devices.
“LTE Broadcast Technology using Snapdragon was first launched in Korea this year, based around two live channels providing content to mobile devices,” he says. The long-running collaboration with Verizon is also ongoing, with Qualcomm providing middleware for a LTE Multicast demonstration staged during February’s SuperBowl.
“Fans are continually looking for a different experience in-venue and [this new technology] constitutes a great example of value-add,” notes Carson.
As for its overall awareness of sports… “We are very active and currently have about eight trials going on with carriers aroiund the world,” confirms Carson. “Lots of people are watching sport and carrying out other tasks, such as looking at social media, and [LTE] provides another dimension that did not exist ten years ago.”