Broadcast & Media

The simple answer to this is ‘jitter and latency’. With regular internet connections there is likely to be higher amounts of jitter and latency which result in noticeable ‘artifacts’ being introduced to the audio stream. Using connections like this that are run on congested networks and shared infrastructure could regularly mean your broadcasts are adversely affected.

However, there are specialist providers who supply low latency connections or private networks which would improve quality and also allows for tighter SLAs and swifter support resolutions.

The answer to this is ‘it depends’, so it is worth considering how likely location changes are when installing your connection.

If the STL is a point-to-point connection then a whole new STL will be required to be installed at the new studio location and the transmitter (known as a cease and re-provide).

However, it is possible to design broadcast networks to allow these kinds of changes to happen without so much disruption and cost as if any locations change, only

If you’re using individual internet connections for each site then yes (a French broadcaster famously was hacked by terrorists who broadcasted their propaganda). However, if you use a private network such as StudioNet, there is no direct public internet access at the transmitters, firewalls aren’t required for each site, but will be managed within the network.

Work with a specialist provider to build in resilience by design, with multiple connections that use different technologies e.g fibre, FTTC and 4G. It is important there is automatic failover between the connections, while preserving IP address for uninterrupted broadcasting.

No. As part of the privatisation agreement Arqiva are regulated by Ofcom. Part of this regulation means that they legally have to offer access to their transmitters, on commercial terms and they can’t dictate .