LEVEL 3, BROADWING TUNE IN TO VIDEO MARKET

Carriers with lots of fiber in the ground suddenly are finding ways to fill up all that capacity. Level 3 Communications will announce this week at the National Association of Broadcasters show that it has created a fiber network for Intelsat to transport standard and high-definition digital video signals around the world. The announcement comes one week after Broadwing launched its own broadcast-specific service with plans for a television-oriented network operations center.

Level 3 claims the network, dubbed Intelsat's Terrestrial Media Transport (TMT), is the first of its kind designed specifically for video. The network, with points of presence in New York, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., will run point-to-point video more efficiently and cheaper than satellite links, said Christian Wolf, a vice president at Level 3.

“That terrestrial component takes advantage of the economics of fiber vs. satellite,” he said, noting that the TMT would transmit video only between the source location, such as a sports stadium, and collocation facility. Satellite will still be used as the distribution link to the 11,000 cable headends in the U.S. that Intelsat services.

For Intelsat, the decision to replace some traditional satellite links with a fiber network allows it to do more in the high-definition realm, and consequently sell more capacity, said Jon Romm, president of Intelsat's media and entertainment business unit.

Currently most broadcasters shoot in standard definition but encode the signal in high definition. With TMT, that model changes.

“It helps the fixed satellite service provider to actually have people film at the native 1.5 gigabit high definition,” Romm said. “We're actually going to be fueling additional capacity sales.”

Indeed, it appears broadcasters are becoming a rich capacity vein for fiber carriers to mine. Broadwing announced last week that it has launched what it's calling the Media Services Network, specifically deployed for broadcast television and media markets. The company also plans to open a Television Operations Center in Columbia, Md. The network, serving New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington, D.C., will serve up “contribution-quality” video using a variety of interfaces. The center in Columbia will operate like the carrier's network operations center in Austin, Texas, but will be staffed by personnel with broadcast expertise.

“In the television world, you have to take it one step deeper,” said Del Bothof, vice president and general manager of media services at Broadwing. “You have to be able to measure the specific feeds.”