Live from Rio 2016: Aldea Solutions Helps Broadcasters Around the World with Signal Transport

A number of broadcasters from around the world are making use of Aldea Solutions and the company’s managed transmission services that make use of fiber and partner teleport facilities to help improve their 2016 Rio Olympics operations and signal transport. “Each customer has a tailored solution,” says Lionel Bentolila, CEO of Aldea Solutions who is on hand at the Olympics IBC with a team of 10 staffers. “Some just have a few circuits that are less than 1 Gbps while others are using circuits up to 10 Gbps. And we are also complementing some of the fiber services with satellite-based services so it’s a big set up.”

Lionel Bentolila, CEO of Aldea Solutions, is on hand at the Summer Olympics with a team of 10 to meet transmission needs of a number of broadcasters.

The company has approximately 35 flight cases full of encoders, decoders, data circuits, and monitoring equipment located throughout the IBC with different clients like Latin American broadcasters, CBC in Canada, and others. In addition, there are another 20 or so similar units at locations around the globe to complete the transmission circuit.

“We have a very wide range of users with some that are simple and others that are quite complex with multiple sites of redundancy,” says Bentolila. “And remote production is being used more so it’s interesting to see how different clients have tackled the Olympics. For some, for example, data is important and audio is always a challenge as it requires a lot of coordination of the lines.”

Bentolila sees broadcasters becoming more and more interested in data services but they are still using a lot of traditional ways of doing things.

“They still like to be here and have people on site,” he adds. “But the Olympics used to be on studio, one control, and one technical area but now there is a whole combination of things.”

Aldea, he says, is ready to meet those evolving needs and will even evolve to meet new needs as, for example, the company installed three points of presence in the Rio area just for the Olympics.

“We have diversity of fiber from multiple providers here in Rio,” he adds. “And some of our clients are happy with just a few MPEG4 circuits while others have multiple JPEG2000 signals.”