Fremantle, one of the world’s largest producers of television programs, has opted for a media transport ring and a high-quality internet service from AFIBER. Fremantle creates well-known programs such as ‘Farmer wants a Wife,’ ‘RTL Boulevard,’ ‘Holland’s Got Talent,’ and ‘Great British Bake Off’ for RTL Nederland and NPO, among others’.
Fremantle creates, develops, produces, and distributes more than 12,000 hours of programs per year in more than 30 countries. Fremantle is also a global player in digital and branded entertainment, with more than 370 million subscribers on 1,500 social media channels and more than 100 billion views across all platforms. For more information, visit fremantle.nl
Fremantle uses state-of-the-art AVID™ media production and distribution technology. These platforms play an essential role as a “media production factory” and support the Fremantle team in turning creativity into programs. The AVID platform spans a broad portfolio of software and hardware for program production, including audio/video production applications, audio/video management and storage, and network equipment for media transport and distribution.
Audio and video media are collected on servers at the Media Park in Hilversum and edited by video editors at the Fremantle location in Amsterdam. To use these types of remote applications, the platform demands a lot from the underlying network. Apart from continuously high throughput (bit rate), the delay time (latency), in this case, is less than 0.5 milliseconds, and the delay time variation must be practically zero.
This ensures that the applications with which video content is edited respond as quickly as possible, which enhances the user experience and productivity of employees. In addition, the network must support the network protocols specific to the AVID platform – the network must be “transparent” to anything the AVID network equipment attempts to transmit.
It is, of course, highly undesirable for TV broadcasts and online media streaming to be interrupted by network failures. To meet these needs, AFIBER designed a diverse (redundant) fiber optic media transport ring for Fremantle between the Fremantle location in Amsterdam and the Mediapark with a separate connection to the media archive in the data center.
The project was expanded with high-quality Internet connections with a peak capacity of up to 2×10 Gbps over two separate fiber-optic routes during the investment phase. As a result, Freemantle’s online platforms’ load capacity and response time, the upload speed of large media files to media partners, and the user experience of employees in the office have been greatly improved.
Mark van Rooijen, Manager ICT & Facility at Fremantle
“Until recently, Fremantle used providers of generic network services for its connections. These connections were used to send the media streams for Fremantle productions to the MediaPark in Hilversum for directing, broadcasting, and distribution to TV viewers and viewers via online media. This was not an ideal solution because these networks are not transparent to all protocols and cannot always meet the latency and bitrate requirements at full load. This can directly affect our production platforms’ image quality or user experience. With AFIBER, Fremantle has more than achieved its primary goals, and the addition of data center connections enables secure and high-quality connections with our media and platform partners. I appreciate AFIBER’s thinking along and personal attention in all phases of this project.”
Remco Kaphorst, CTO and co-founder at AFIBER
“This was a beautiful and challenging project to realize in a short time. Fremantle demanded that the media transport between the Fremantle site and the Mediapark would run over two completely separate paths and equipment. To realize these connections, it was necessary to bring in new fiber-optic connections to the Fremantle building and provide them with two separate entries in the building to connect them to our network. By doing so, the risk of loss of transmitted media due to physical causes is reduced to almost zero. Fremantle was also looking for a solution for its deep archive that safely stores all productions from the past. The wish was to find a separate backup location for the deep archive, preferably in a data center, because the facilities there against, for example, unauthorized access, power failures, and fire are at a very high level. All in all Fremantle now has a very robust solution running. I want to thank all teams for the pleasant cooperation in this project.”
Are you interested in fibre optic connections for demanding business applications or distribution of audio and video in The Netherlands? Please contact olivier.ten.wolde@afiber.net
About AFIBER
AFIBER is an independent provider of fiber optic connectivity for business customers and service providers. We help organizations with the delivery and management of high-quality networks between branches, data centers, cloud providers, and providers of network and IT services.
AFIBER offers business customers fiber optic coverage in a large part of the Netherlands. This fiber optic network is connected to the main data centers and various regional and national fiber optic networks. This enables us to make an independent choice for our customers for the right connectivity for your company network.
