FEED
Spring issue 2024 pp36-43
Five years since 5G's introduction and the global telecom landscape has witnessed significant evolution. Mobile operators are projected to spend $1.1 trillion on capex from 2020-2025, predominantly on 5G, according to trade body GSMA. With 2023 heralding 5G's launch in 30 new markets, primarily in Africa and Asia, global 5G connections are projected to soar to 10-billion by 2025.
5G availability on public networks in most European nations, South Korea, the U.S, China and Canada is widespread although concentration remains in urban areas. While the global average download speeds have increased to 207.42 Mbps, 5G upload performance has stagnated at 19.90 Mbps, and latency continues to drag on the whole experience, according to recent tests by Ookla.
The EU warned in January that low 5G deployment in Europe risks other technologies dependent on fast internet such as AI will face delays. In 2023, 5G in Europe reached 80% of the population, up from 73% the previous year, whereas the level is 98% in South Korea and the US and 94% in Japan, according to the EU. Around 40 million people in EU countries will still have no access to a fixed gigabit connection by 2030 therefore failing to meet the block’s target of providing 5G to all households.
For media and broadcast, 5G is a classic technical engineering story. A lot of early (over) promise brought to down to earth with longer timelines than expected, exacerbated by outside blockers like the global pandemic. This year finds 5G for broadcast moving into commercial but still niche use.
For mobile video uplink vendors at the front end of live event broadcast, 5G is an incremental evolution which increases the aggregate of bandwidth available for coverage of live events.
“To our customers in news and sports 5G is a natural progression in cellular technology and offers new spectrum and infrastructure,” says Matt McEwen, VP of Product Management TVU Networks. Most TVU customers are ordering cellular units with a 5G option “because they want to be future proofed” but are using the box today “to aggregate multiple links for high bandwidth and consistent connectivity.”
LiveU, whose bonded cellular modems also support 5G, reports “every day” broadcasts using 5G over the public network also to add bandwidth. At a rough estimate, over half of LiveU transmissions in the U.S use 5G, as part of their standard workflow.
What’s not widespread, and achieved only in a handful of trials and limited commercial application, are the benefits of superfast, ultra-low latency, multi-megabit upload and downloads.
Depending on the country and exact choice of rollout there are reports that 5G has not offered amazingly better performance than top-of-the-range LTE, the standard that 5G was to supercede.
“The dream of simply turning up to an event with 5G kit, switching on and streaming high-quality, low-latency video direct to the studio is proving elusive,” says Stuart Brown, Special Projects Director at Domo Broadcast Systems.
“5G coverage is patchy and likely to be limited to highly populated urban areas for the foreseeable future. Using public networks to cover large events can also run into problems with network congestion, as most attract large numbers of spectators who also compete for access to the cellular network.”
McEwen agrees, “We would not recommend a customer to rely on one carrier’s 5G. That is hugely risky because there is no such thing as 100% perfect coverage. Customers may not use LTE or 3G but these are fallbacks which it is prudent to have.”
Much of this is to with the delay in rolling out the full fat flavour of the technology. Early phases of 5G relied on existing infrastructure (non-standalone networks) to deliver 5G and are only now moving to standalone (SA) technology in which the whole network has been upgraded to 5G.
Without 5G standalone there can be no network slicing, a much-heralded benefit to broadcasters.
“Speaking frankly, SA took a little longer to rollout than carriers would have liked,” says Dan Pisarski, CTO, LiveU. “Covid may have played some role there. Now we’re seeing more SA networks available and that leads to the ability to finally leverage slicing after many years of speaking about it.
“Widespread deployment is the next milestone,” he adds. “Ubiquitous access to a SA network is the next big leap. That will open the door to widespread slicing and should lead to higher performance on the public networks. Some of the more specialised parts of 5G only happen because of virtualisation of the network core.”
In the interim, the industry has sought to bypass public networks and set up private 5G networks specifically for event coverage use. There is already a clear disparity of investment between the two. The private network market is expected to grow to $10.41 billion by 2028, compared to a mere $1.89 billion for network slicing, according to GSMA.
LiveU cites 20-30 examples of private 5G networks in action last year, mostly around sports. The number demonstrates that this kind of deployment is more readily available than slicing.
Both slicing and private methods share similarities. Both enable broadcasters to use a dedicated section of bandwidth, highly useful in traffic contested areas such as at arenas where congestion from other users can delay and interrupt the transmission. Both have the capacity to receive and forward multiple, concurrent UHD videos in real-time.
Live event producers have long used wireless cameras because of the flexibility and greater safety over cabled kit. The key advantage of 5G over traditional wireless camera systems is that it’s bidirectional, with IP connectivity to all devices on a given network.
“As IP workflows are now embedded in event coverage — particularly since increasing adoption of remote production— this is a game-changer,” says Brown. “Previously nomadic wireless camera systems can now be monitored and controlled via IP using their built-in GUIs, and engineering teams can manage their mobile assets wherever these assets are deployed in the world, reducing the number of technicians required on-site.”
However, challenges remain regarding the implementation of the technology to handle the high bandwidth and very low latency required in high-end live production.
“5G is someway off in terms of displacing traditional wireless camera systems,” says Brown who says 5G can struggle to deliver the required bitrates of a live high end sport “because it is optimised for maximising the download speeds to consumer phones and tablets.”
Where slicing scores over private 5G is in enabling a guaranteed end to end path from RF to the local tower and backhaul across the network. Private networks will only assure the local portion of this, after which the feed can hit congestion in the public network.
In addition, in private scenarios the broadcaster has to work a little harder to setup their own infrastructure such as radio, antenna and a network core to deploy the radio into. Even here though there have been advances. “You can get everything down to running on a mini PC plugged into the radio. It is virtualised in the cloud and much more accessible,” says Pisarski.
Countries are starting to set aside some frequency for private use, managed by the spectrum owner which is usually the government. The process differs from being almost as simple as filling out a web form in some parts of the globe to hassles of red tape.
Slicing on the other hand is arranged by the carrier in partnership with a broadcaster and dedicates a portion of the in air frequency and a portion of the whole virtual network for just the time and place required.
“Broadcasters are excited about slicing since a guaranteed slice of bandwidth is very appealing when you know you’re going to be in specific site for remote broadcast,” says Pisarski. “Media companies will likely prefer to provision slices with specific service level requirements (SLRs) for individual events spanning hours or days.”
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Private 5G and Networks slice at the Coronation
LiveU gear was used to deliver coverage of the King’s Coronation in May 2023 over both public and private 5G networks. A network slice of a public 5G SA network was carved by Vodafone for feeds of more than 20 ITN cameras in front of Buckingham Palace and along the Mall to be transmitted back to ITN’s London HQ via LiveU’s cellular technology.
Separately, the BBC team broadcasting the event joined forces with Neutral Wireless to popup what was then the world’s largest single-use private 5G SA network. LiveU’s 5G bonded live streaming encoder was once again called into action with a Neutral Wireless 5G SIM card was inserted into each LiveU unit.
Pisarski says, “What stood out was the reliability and scalability of the solution for high-quality live coverage at crowded events. Unlike previous private wireless technologies, this set-up was plug-and-play and avoided all the complexities that organisations have previously experienced.”
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Having all links available from 5G down, added to network slicing, will give customers the ability to have more bandwidth more of the time but this doesn’t mean customers are going to abandon lower frequencies.
“We experience this ourselves, for example, walking down street with excellent coverage only for the signal to drop off on the next block perhaps because of greater congestion or gaps between towers,” says McEwen. For this reason, he says, live event producers will always need carrier aggregation. “Even on a high speed SA network there will be dead zones.”
One big question surrounds the commercial model. Broadcasters desire a similar just-in-time flexibility of satellite where they can book an uplink for a few hours at a moment’s notice. Carriers are more keen on larger volumes of business, such as the year-round frequency slicing that an autonomous car company might pay.
“What remains to be seen is exactly how the economics are going to work,” Pisarski says. “What is the price tag of slicing versus satellite and therefore what is the advantage? In both private 5G and slicing during the Coronation the economics came out less than satellite but I will say the economics of it are early.”
Alessandro Reitano, SVP Sports Production at Sky Deutschland, urges broadcasters to keep highlighting the technical and financial advantages of 5G as a transport layer. “There’s still too much dependency, in our view, on traditional transport mechanisms. This needs to change to fully allow the use of shortened and far more flexible workflows. We see demand growing from broadcasters who want to use 5G and IP-bonding at major events to drive more extensive and diverse coverage.”
A holistic integration of wireless cameras over a dedicated 5G network will do more than enhance the overall efficiency of live broadcasts — it will form the foundation of the interconnected broadcast infrastructure that will pave the way towards the increasingly automated future of sports broadcasting technology.
XR VR
The launch of Apple Vision Pro might kickstart a fresh wave of live streamed virtual, mixed or extended reality (XR) applications long promised by 5G evangelists.
The underlying technology of Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) is quite mature—and may even beat network slicing to the market. MEC is the near real-time processing of large amounts of data produced by edge devices and applications closest to where it’s captured. Scenes can be rendered in the network and XR content can be delivered directly to headsets with minimal local graphics processing
An example is Amazon Wavelength, a service that embeds AWS compute and storage services within a carrier’s 5G network paving the way for ultra low latency applications. It’s available in 30 cities including Manchester.
“With the addition of 5G and edge computing using Wavelength Zones network latency in cloud-based remote production can be reduced,” says Peter Henebäck, Solutions Architect for AWS.
5G Broadcast
5G encompasses many verticals, and one of them is Broadcast. 5G Broadcast (5G BC) is the technology designed to complement DTT, bringing an original use case and generating new cash flow enveloped in new business models. Like any other wireless technology, 5G BC was specified for the first time in 2017 and enhanced in 2020. However, to enable 5G BC to leverage the UHF band with existing bandwidths (e.g., 6MHz in the Americas, 7 MHz in Australia, and 8 MHz in MEA and APAC), the wireless technology needed to undergo a new standard enhancement, which took place in the 3GPP Rel-18 to be ready by mid-2024. And now, 5G BC is ready for prime time!
Rohde & Schwarz has conducted and supported more than 40 trials and proofs-of-concept over the last four years to investigate the benefits of 5G BC for content distribution to mobile, as well as to test the technology's limitations. Use cases include live and linear streaming, public safety, and venue casting. According to Mohamed Aziz Taga, Head Business Development & Strategy, R&S, “5G BC is the right technology when it comes to reaching a large audience simultaneously, offering significant cost, energy, and frequency efficiency advantages versus the existing legacy methods for content distribution using Unicast.”
He says that “tremendous business development and market creation efforts” 5G BC is now mature enough for commercialisation. “Currently, more focus is being placed on fine-tuning the right business model before the first deployments,” he says.
Private 5G for fan experience at sports
Recent F1 Grand Prix in the US benefitted from private 5G networks Verizon deployed a private solution at the track in Miami that enabled venue management solutions like ticket scanning, point of sale and instant uploads for accredited photographers.
T-Mobile activated something similar on behalf of the venues in Vegas during the 2023 GP including “customer perks at the Sphere, an immersive driving experience with 360-degree HD views of the circuit captured by 5G-connected cameras and deployment throughout the Las Vegas Grand Prix Pit Building for race teams. ]
mmWave enhancements both inside and outside the Allegiant Stadium, enabled fans with T-Mobile’s network to quickly update their social feeds on the latest plays during Super Bowl LVIII.
SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Orange are also arranging a series of private 5G networks at venues in Paris for both Olympics broadcast coverage and to counter anticipated spectator mobile saturation during the opening ceremony. This will see 10,000 athletes being parading down the Seine in boats watched by 400,000 spectators, smartphones in hand. Cameras on each boat will live transmit footage over Orange's private 5G.
A unique application was trialled at Wimbledon 2023 where Vodafone headsets enabled visually impaired fans on Centre Court to watch live footage streamed from local TV cameras over 5G. The footage was enhanced to suit the person’s specific sight profile.
5G in a live studio production
Danish public broadcaster TV 2 teamed with Sony to deliver a proof of concept using 5G in a live studio environment.
TV 2 evaluated 5G’s capabilities during production of an evening show from its studio in Copenhagen. A pair of wireless 5G-enabled cameras in addition and wired studio cameras were linked to a private 5G network created by Cumucore.
During the broadcast, the production team included pictures acquired over 5G, proving that the picture quality matched the standard required for a prime-time live show.
For Morten Brandstrup, Head of News Technology at TV 2 Denmark the POC opened the possibility of using 5G cameras in more studio productions. “This will add greatly to the flexibility of our production workflows,” he said.
5G contribution at Special Olympics World Games
Sky Deutschland created a multi-cam, 5G and cloud video production proof-of-concept to cover table tennis at the Special Olympics World Games, in Berlin last June.
The broadcaster used the LU800 in four-camera mode, plus three LU-Smart equipped smartphones to capture the action. Feeds were encoded and sent to Munich and decoded on reception. Vision mixing occurred in the cloud with the final output made available to both the director of the World feed and also to Sky Deutschland’s unilateral feed.
5G live broadcast workflow in Spain
A live concert by the Spanish singer Israel Fernández provided a chance for Spanish group UHD-Spain to test drive 5G contribution and cloud production. A TVU RPS One unit contributed UHD-HDR signals which were mixed in the cloud for remote production, before processed for distribution also via 5G and using multiple transport methods, such as terrestrial (DVB-T2), satellite (DVB-S2), and the internet (OTT, HbbTV) to TV, PCs, tablets, and mobile devices.
Emili Planas, CTO at Group MediaPro said of the test, “Very soon, the production model we have tested will become the standard for covering live events with the highest UHD-HDR quality, leveraging the capabilities of 5G, and delocalized operations through connected resources.”
German soccer 5G kickoff
The German Football League (DFL) executed a 5G live broadcast test from Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena during the 2023 German Supercup in partnership with Viaplay, DFL subsidiary Sportcast, and TVU Networks. TVU live video transmitters harnessed the Deutsche Telekom 5G network to enable Viaplay crew to roam locker rooms to the pitch, capturing new viewing angles which were mixed into the production even with 75000 spectators (and their phones) in close proximity.
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