While the region’s audience has grown accustomed to switching to CNN and BBC for instant news feed, the last eight months saw for the first time in the region, an Arabic broadcaster as a strong alternative. In less then one year, Al-Jazeera Satellite TV channel, became the first and primary news broadcasters’ choice.
The Al-Jazeera TV teams brought coverage from the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan throughout the US military action helped to establish the station as a globally recognized broadcaster. Throughout the conflict, tens of millions of people watched broadcasts on CNN and the BBC that were re-cast from Al-Jazeera reports.
Having access to a technology that enables Al-Jazeera teams to broadcast the news, live and prior to their rivals was key in Al-Jazeera’s status today, reported a company press release. Such is the videophone, a small piece of equipment, which streams video over the portable Inmarsat Global Area Network (GAN) satellite terminal.
Al-Jazeera equipped its journalists with Fujitsu Siemens’ C Series
Lifebooks. The C Series notebooks boast numerous features including the latest mobile processor and an optional wireless local area network module.
Together, units small enough to be carried as hand luggage aboard an aircraft and into remote areas where standard television uplink hardware or, indeed, even the most basic infrastructure does not exist.
“We have replaced the previous notebooks with faster ones so that our journalists can leverage the optimal capacity of Inmarsat’s GAN technology. It is essential that the laptops and cameras we use offer optimum performance and advanced mobile computing technology as our reporters are often based in remote locations. These are linked to an Inmarsat GAN satellite terminal for the live feed of data and multimedia news,” said Salah Sediki, IT manager at Al-Jazeera.
The signal is transmitted via GAN Mobile ISDN across Inmarsat’s network of satellites in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the Equator. GAN is an ‘on-demand’ service providing bandwidth when and where required, without the need for leases. The Inmarsat service covers up to 98 percent of landmasses, and is a Mobile ISDN service operating at speeds of up to 64kbit/s and Mobile Packet Data service.
Many broadcasters are now using two GAN terminals linked together to give 128kbit/s ISDN connection – improving the picture’s quality. The videophone is a TH2 "Talking Head" videophone, manufactured by 7E Communications Ltd part of the Inmarsat partnership of global companies.
The transmission of live video from challenging places like Afghanistan requires a satellite uplink facility comprising at least a ton of recording and broadcast gear. Such gear is usually housed inside a van and requires a crew of three to four to operate it.
Moving all that equipment is a large and difficult operation, especially in a war zone. But, free of technical constraints and logistical maneuvers for a ton of equipment, television reporters can operate virtually single-handedly. A lone reporter or a team
of two can be deployed into an extreme geographic environment or sensitive area in a matter of hours, rather than days and be on air within a matter of minutes.
In essence, video and audio from the field is sent via a single, simple telephone call. In the past, broadcasting companies were limited to terrestrial fixed line telephones or intermittent cell phones to do ‘live audio phone-ins’ from the field (basically a live radio report), but now dramatic video footage can be added in most cases – all at a fraction of the cost of standard video transmissions. – (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
