Left: Steve Dargham from Telstra International’s Service Delivery team in Vancouver with Australia’s second gold medallist, Lydia Lassila
A team from Telstra International was responsible for bringing the vision from the Games into Australia via international submarine cables, while teams from Telstra Operations worked hard on delivering that vision to television, mobile and online platforms for customers across the country. As well as choosing how to receive the live picture coverage, customers could opt to receive SMS alerts for their favourite events, medal tally updates and regular Olympics news – all delivered straight to their phone.
“Capacity wise, this is the largest project we’ve had for a major sporting event outside of Australia,” said Drew Kelton, Managing Director, Telstra International. “We’ve worked closely with other stakeholders both in Australia and in Vancouver over the last couple of years to pull this effort together.”
The International team had to overcome a number of technical challenges along the way, the most significant of which was the difference in core network standards between North America/Canada and Australia. Meanwhile, in order to ensure seamless delivery, a lot of work had to be carried out behind the scenes by the Operations team on the platforms that underpinned the mobile viewing experience.
All the action in high definition
One of the most exciting features of this Olympics telecast was the full High Definition (HD) coverage offered to both Pay TV and Free-To-Air customers. “We spent over eight months researching the best compression technologies that would accommodate the needs of our clients (Foxtel and Channel 9) as well as give our customers the best picture quality vision available,” said Drew. “This has now set the platform for future sporting events.”
Keeping a close eye on the Games
During the Games Telstra representatives were on site around the clock at the International Broadcast Centre in Vancouver. They were supported by a ‘Special Events’ team based at the Global Operations Centre in Melbourne who ensured the Games stayed on screen and that there were no breaks in transmission across Australia.
Darren Wilson, Director Global Customer Services, commented: “The Telstra International team delivered the end-to-end service between Canada and Australia 24 hours a day right through the 17 days of competition, detecting any issues – both actual and potential – and co-ordinating resolution across multiple international partners as well as internal groups.”
“Every time we deliver an Olympics we learn something new; we then apply these learnings to the next opportunity. This keeps us one step ahead of our competition,” added Darren.
What’s next for Telstra?
Now that the Winter Olympics are over, Telstra is already turning its attention to the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. These will present a unique set of logistical challenges due to network readiness issues, with the broadcast solution involving a mix of satellite and terrestrial channels.
Based on the successful delivery of the Winter Games to Australia – which was largely due to the effective collaboration between different divisions across the company – it is a challenge to which Telstra will certainly rise.