CATV Consulting - London 2012 Olympic Games

Case Study – CATV Solutions

Business Challenge

The London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee had to ensure that outstanding CATV transmission and distribution services could be provided to ensure all events were streamed and transmitted in real time across all venues within the Games remit.

Our Approach

AJAR Technology was engaged on behalf of the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee to design, supply, install, commission, support and decommission the CATV transmission and distribution systems and associated coaxial cabling for the London 2012 Olympic games.

 

The design process began in March 2010; a consultative process that resulted in the definition of the fundamental principles of the main TV distribution system in order to ensure that the service was resilient, robust and “live live”- the inherent latency of the system could be no more than 25 milliseconds in picture across all venues, the press tribunes and the field of play.

The most appropriate solution was defined as a Hybrid Fibre Coaxial CATV network and this was designed and configured to distribute a mixture of local feeds, Olympic Broadcast Service (OBS) channels and broadcast television signals from both domestic and international broadcasters as appropriate to each venue.

All components of the main transmission system were based in two centralised locations, from where signals were distributed across the network feeding the Technical Equipment Rooms located at each venue over a resilient path with a failover fibre optic system and secondary power supplies.

Our Solution

This included CATV services to Olympic Park venues, both permanent and temporary competition and non-competition, the four “river zone” venues- North Greenwich Arena (the 02), Excel Centre, Royal Artillery Barracks and Greenwich Park- and the Athlete’s Village. In summary the project comprised the following:

  • 23 Olympic Park Venues
  • 37 Competition & Non Competition Venues
  • 41 OBS real time local feeds
  • 50 public and commercial channels
  • 9000 television end points
  • 365 press tribunes across the stadia and the Main Press Centre
  • 180Km of temporary cable overlay

The services provided at the Athletes’ Village were to implement a temporary overlay CATV infrastructure for the distribution of CATV services to the 3000 television endpoints across the 12 plots in 2818 apartments in addition to local offices and retail outlets.  This included the supply of all associated transmission equipment, installation & commissioning services, testing, game time support and decommissioning post games to return the system to its pre-games configuration.

AJAR Technology also provided the technical operational support shortly prior to and for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic games.  This comprised the provision of cluster based, onsite technical support engineers for the entire Olympic Park, the Athletes’ Village and the River zone venues.  The technical resource provided worked to a support roster produced by AJAR Technology and the client to provide a 24/7 games time support capability that was upscaled/downscaled in accordance with the games programme and venue requirements as necessary.  Onsite gold stock equipment spares were also provided by AJAR Technology as the round the clock teams of specialist CATV engineers required to cover the various venue clusters were to adhere to a 30 minute SLA.

AJAR Technology’s scope of works also called for the decommissioning of the equipment and cabling that had been installed post games.  This was completed according to a decommissioning plan created prior to the end of the Paralympic games for a duration of 10 days. Where Olympic venues or elements thereof were not required for the Paralympic competition, these were decommissioned immediately following their usage requirement to ensure a streamlined, cost effective and controlled process where possible.

The Benefits

As the world watched London, the Organising Committee were confident in the systems that had been provided, and all venues across the Games gave viewers the “live live” transmission that was required during all events. As a result, in addition to our work on the Olympic venues, we also worked with the National Olympic committees of the USA, Japan, Brazil as well as the Rio 2016 Organising Committee and FIFA to provide an IPTV version of Olympic television across their respective venues in Central and Greater London.

Our Case Studies

Testimonial

“Working with you on the 2012 CATV project has been the highlight of a 40 year career…..Your professionalism and friendship has been very much appreciated in delivering this highly successful project, often in a highly challenging environment. Being new to CATV at the start of the project, I was on a bit of a steep learning curve and I very much appreciated your help, patience and understanding”

– Ken Beynon, London 2012 Olympic Venue Design Lead