In our most ambitious project to date, the Neutral Wireless team deployed the world’s largest single-use private 5G standalone (SA) network to support the broadcast of His Majesty King Charles III’s Coronation this past Saturday.
Working alongside engineers from BBC R&D and the StrathSDR 5G team (from the University of Strathclyde), our team designed, built, and tested an 8 radio private network for deployment along The Mall, with partners including Sony, LiveU and Haivision.
An astonishing feat of innovation, engineering and tech ingenuity.
Mark Smith, IBC Media Accelerator Manager
Our network provided over 1Gbps of uncontested wireless connectivity to 20 of the world’s leading broadcasters, using two adjacent 40MHz channels (80 MHz allocation) in Ofcom’s n77 shared-spectrum band. Local broadcasters included the BBC, ITN and Sky, with international broadcasters such as ABC, ARD, CBC, CBS, CNN, RTL and TV2 Danmark also involved. In total, our network provided connectivity to around 60 devices over the course of the day, carrying high-definition video from London to homes across the globe.
Shared spectrum being put to great use here!
Ofcom
In addition to broadcaster contribution traffic, working with Sony our network was also used to stream a 55Mbps 4K 50fps low latency stream with glass-to-glass latency below 100ms and dynamic QoS control.
As is often the case with highly-attended live events, the crowds in attendance this weekend led to vastly increased congestion across the public cellular networks (which were saturated even with the deployment of additional 4G/5G sites throughout the area) and WiFi bands (due to the abundance of MiFi units and hotspots). This would generally be a problem for broadcasters reliant on traditional public cellular bonding for wireless camera connectivity — with available throughput often limited to kilobytes, well below the broadcasters’ requirements for HD video.
With this in mind, our Neutral Wireless 5G SA private network proved a revelation to our on-site broadcaster partners — with several requesting Neutral Wireless SIM cards on the day, after experiencing connectivity issues via other methods. Our contiguous, dedicated spectrum meant that there was no competition for bandwidth. With zero packet loss handover between cells, directors and camera operators were also granted greater freedom of movement — allowing them to grab the best possible shots of the royal family.
The Neutral Wireless team were also able to support BBC Radio’s coverage of the event, providing the required connectivity for their temporary recording studios on The Mall, and directly under the balcony during Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s appearance.
We’d like to thank the BBC R&D and StrathSDR teams — as well as our colleagues at Sony, LiveU, and Haivision — for their partnership and expertise over the course of the past few weeks, and also to wish a congratulations to everyone involved on a job well done.
From here, Neutral Wireless will look to further push the boundaries of what is possible with private 5G and shared spectrum connectivity, and look forward to facilitating more live event broadcasts in the months and years to come.
For another perspective on our non-public network (NPN) for the Coronation, Ian Wagdin of the BBC R&D team recently posted a detailed blog on the BBC website.
To enquire about acquiring a Neutral Wireless private network for a live event broadcast (or for anything else!), please feel free to get in touch with our sales team at info@neutralwireless.com.
