Horse racecourses are often sited at remote and rural locations, where reliable, high-speed connectivity is lacking. The 5G Flyaway allows BMC TV to deliver high-quality, low latency feeds from remote locations using 5G networks. Additionally, the open nature of the 5G Flyaway has enabled BMC TV to easily integrate the solution into its contribution network, providing visibility across its extensive video transmission estate.

The 5G Flyaway solution allows sports broadcasters and media companies to reach fibre and satellite picture quality over cellular networks and deliver low latency standard Constant Bitrate MPEG Transport Streams, which is crucial for maintaining video quality in sports broadcasting. The solution is designed around the needs of sports broadcasters to enable long-distance 5G transmission, without the limitations of backpack-style solutions. For sites with wired connectivity, the 5G Flyaway provides sub-second encoding and decoding.

Lee Russell, Director of Operations, BMC TV commented: “Deploying bonded cellular transmission has helped us to address some of the unique challenges that we face when transporting live feeds from horse races. We needed a solution that was highly reliable and that delivered low latency, and after testing several solutions offering bonded cellular transmission, it was clear that the 5G Flyaway met all of our requirements.”

Kieran Kunhya, Founder and CEO, Open Broadcast Systems, added: “The 5G Flyaway has been designed to meet the needs of sports broadcasters and media companies like BMC TV. It has already been used to transmit live feeds from hundreds of horse races across the UK and has proven to be a highly effective and reliable alternative to satellite and fibre”.