Over the past 24 months, DoubleTake Sports have been proud to work with Telstra Broadcast Services to test new and evolving connectivity solutions to add redundancy and reliability to our transmission paths.

Leveraging Telstra’s world-leading network, we have demonstrated the significant advancements that 5G is providing the industry, through real world use cases of transmission-optimising technologies for live, on-air delivery (including a world-first).

This testing has included:

5G Slicing: Network slicing involves reserving a section of the public network for a private purpose. In August 2024, we used 5G slicing to transmit our raw camera feeds from North Sydney Oval to our production facility in Brisbane, for a production airing on the Nine Network. To the best of our and Telstra’s knowledge, this was the first ever use of 5G slicing in a linear television production worldwide.

5G Lanes: Like network slicing, use of dedicated 5G network ‘lanes’ provides a quasi-private, dedicated connection to Telstra’s network core, ensuring prioritised and protected transmission of our production signals on Australia’s leading IP network. With Telstra, we deployed 5G lanes for FIFA and Football Australia in the recent Four Nations Invitational.

5G Priority Transport (QoS): Whereas a network ‘slice’ or ‘lane’ is private, priority transport uses public sections of the 5G network, but with QoS applied to your specific connection to enable priority access to the network. Simpler and cheaper than slicing, priority transport can still ‘punch through’ most network congestion at crowded sporting venues.

 IP over DVN: The DVN (‘Distributed Video Network’) is part of Telstra’s nationwide media network, and it usually carries traditional broadcast video signals. In August, we used the DVN to transmit non-traditional IP video signals from Leichhardt Oval, Sydney to our production facility in Brisbane, for a free-to-air production.

Through this testing and implementation, we have been able to develop scalable, cost-effective solutions for our clients. Helping to ensure that high-quality broadcast coverage is not only reliable, but world-leading and accessible to all clients and tiers of sport. We look forward to continuing this work with Telstra, and to continually providing our clients with world-class broadcast solutions.