We Implemented a Streaming Platform for a Major South American Telecommunications Company

Learn how we implemented and provide ongoing support for a solution that enables streaming (live and on demand) of various audiovisual content.

Context

We work with a Latin American telecommunications company that offers mobile and fixed telephony as well as internet services for both residential and corporate clients. It has nationwide coverage.

Starting in 2010, this company began venturing into streaming services (for both live and on-demand content) and was seeking a platform that would meet its objectives.

The Project

We advised, implemented, and provide ongoing support for an end-to-end solution that allows users to watch live events and access audiovisual content on demand.

While the platform serves various purposes, we adapted it to deliver an outstanding experience for live sports event broadcasting. Its configuration ensures smooth viewing of, for example, a football match, without image stuttering and without loss of source signal quality.

For this solution, we worked with different partners for the various components of the architecture. For origin, encoding, and transcoding, we used an on-premises solution from the leading vendor in the market. For storage, we used low-latency NAS from a recognized manufacturer, which enables online content recording management.

We provide support at the edge (CDN) level and at the network layer to ensure high availability of the solution. Additionally, we supply set-top boxes and their management platform, which enables the telecommunications company to offer a comprehensive solution to its clients.

Furthermore, we developed and integrated a playout system for viewing a camera system distributed across strategic locations throughout the country. This signal is retransmitted through various media, and the telecommunications company's clients use it for informational and recreational purposes.

We also developed and integrated a streaming system for radio stations. This is a platform that receives radio signals over IP (using Icecast) and generates the streaming content consumed by the end user or a CDN.

One of the challenges of this project was building the capabilities to manage the streaming process from content generation to delivery to the end user on their television or phone. To achieve this, we trained our team and recruited new talent to ensure a successful outcome.

How Did We Add Value to the Project?

Our work focused on delivering an excellent user experience quality. This involved researching and implementing technological advances, advising on signal adaptation for different transmission resolutions, and centralizing system administration to proactively address failures.

After extensive testing, we achieved a latency (delay) of between 10 and 12 seconds (the traditional value is typically around 40 seconds). We also researched how to achieve a balance between the platform's demands on a device (for example, the amount of battery consumed when using the platform on a phone) and the delay. This makes it a competitive streaming platform.

We also added load balancers -- the first device through which the user accesses the platform -- a critical component in live event broadcasting with high traffic concurrency. We installed, configured, and ensured system availability, which is now capable of tolerating traffic spikes without service interruption.

A particularly challenging aspect was ensuring successful interaction between systems and applications from different vendors.

Finally, we highlight our problem-solving capability. Complete knowledge of the architecture across all its components, different technologies, and vendors enables us to conduct in-depth analysis when performance, availability, and security issues arise.

We have nearly 15 years of experience in streaming solutions that have evolved over time, and we take pride in the professionalism with which our team works across implementation, support, and operations phases.

Paysandu 926CP 11100MontevideoTel: +598 2902 1477

Av. Ana G. Mendez 1399, km 3PR 00926San JuanTel: +1 (787) 775-2100

Carmen C. Balaguer 10El Millon, DNSanto DomingoTel: +1 (809) 412-8672

Our Policies