Supporting Continued LATAM Growth With Resilient RF Solutions

LATAM Edition – June 2015

The significant economic growth in Latin America over the past 10 years is driving demand for satellite services such as pay TV and DTH (direct to home) services, with satellite operators reaching a wider audience, at a lower cost.

This demand in the region is driving investment in the number of satellites being launched, as requirements for satellite capacity especially for Ku-band increases.  Global live news and sports events such as the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, as well and increase in regional events (Copa America in Chile) have also created a surge in services for 4K Ultra-HD satellite broadcasting, and the growth in new HD channels being offered. In addition, demand for affordable and fast internet access push service providers to look for alternative solutions due to the lack of infrastructure in remote regions. All of this requires more reliable, resilient, flexible and cost effective solutions.

As thousands of customers could be connected to a particular live downlink, Copa America tournament for example, the impact on service agreements and revenue is huge if poorly designed solutions are used.

The current push for service provides such as Claro, Tigo and Telefonica to provide Triple Play services (Voice, Video and Data) across the region demand the continuing expansion for satellite capacity in Latin America by TV broadcasters to distribute content to the head-ends. This requires investment to expand operations and infrastructure at ground station facilities, increasing the number of feeds they use to distribute RF signals at their ground stations, or to upgrade their existing RF infrastructure to improve efficiency, performance and signal quality, whilst making cost savings on space and ROI.

ETL Systems, a British based designer and manufacturer of RF distribution equipment, is at the heart of this growth. ETL has a long history of providing market leading RF matrices to the Satcomms industry and concentrates on high quality and unique designs. As a result ETL's RF matrices are found around the world in broadcast, marine, telecoms and government sectors – basically anywhere that multiple satellite feeds need to be received and transmitted.

Having designed custom L-band RF solutions for the world's leading broadcasters, ETL realise the importance of resilient products required for 24/7 services to a number of platforms.  Our matrix range is ideal for broadcast applications which involve rapid changing of occasional use services for television receive only (TVRO) playout centres or news gathering and sports events.

Our in-house design team concentrates on RF distribution designs which result in seamless broadcasts with no interruptions. At the heart of this is the use of market leading components in our designs which give great performance, backed up by monitoring, remote control and redundancy for further peace of mind.

Typically a broadcaster's cable TV headend will have multiple dishes that are aligned to different satellites to be routed to a bank of receivers. The RF Switch Matrix provides flexible RF routing, allowing channel changes to be made remotely, without any interruptions. Matrices are typically used in mission critical applications, such as news and sports, where downlink feeds are regularly switching to deliver live programs to millions of viewers.

The commercial benefits for broadcasters who opt for an RF matrix include efficiency and flexibility for the allocation of their antenna feeds to IRDs (integrated receiver/decoder). RF signal routing can be done remotely via a web browser interface or PC software, allowing automation of signal switching, reducing the chance of costly mistakes being made from manual patch switching.

ETL's matrix range is designed to be compact, ensuring that valuable rack space is kept to a minimum. They can be supplied part populated, so broadcasters can also save money by not having to purchase a large matrix upfront. They can buy a matrix which to fit their antenna feed and IRD requirements at the time, and can expand the matrix as they grow.  

To avoid costly downtime in services, ETL matrices are designed to be resilient with hot-swap active components such as dual redundant power supplies, RF cards, CPU cards and fans. Ensuring the matrix stays in service in the unlikely event of a failure.

We have a broad range of matrix chassis such as the 16 inputs x 16 outputs Victor (1U), 16 inputs x 32 outputs Valiant (3U), 32 inputs x 32 outputs Enigma (6U), 64 inputs x 64 outputs Vortex (8U) and the 128 inputs x 128 outputs Vulcan (16U).

Other features available include variable gain to balance input signal levels, RF signal monitoring, high 1dB gain compression for high power applications and LNB powering.

To complement these solutions, we have recently launched the Stingray series, which allows RF signals to be distributed over fibre up to 10kms, with indoor (1U and 2U chassis) as well as an outdoor enclosure, which can withstand wide environmental conditions and is designed to be pole or wall mounted close to a remote antenna.

Latin America is an area which ETL views as key to our future growth, and where we are looking to expand our operations significantly to meet this drive in demand.  We have recently appointed Rafael Zamora, a dedicated sales manager based in Miami, to focus on growing key markets and establishing new areas of concentration.

Website: www.etlsytems.com

Contact for more information: Kristy Taylor, Assistant Marketing Manager
Email: Kristy.taylor@etlsystems.com