"Our Ka-Sat tries to open new doors and frontiers; that could mean new economic opportunities and promotion of important activities particularly valuable in sports communication." These are the words of CEO of Eutelsat Italy, Renato Farina.
The Ka-Sat with its own characteristics and capabilities is a network that can be used for TV contribution at low cost, in fact, with "News Spotter" -this is the name of the service- you can offer inexpensive video services with accuracy, and the cost is about half than the traditional one in KU band and besides, transmission systems are drastically reduced in terms of cost and size.
A similar system can be easily used even for the football fields where matches train and becomes very useful as it allows anybody to convey important information on the evolution of the team training. There are also devices and sat links that can be installed and maintained in a fixed position on the field, since they have a cost starting from € 350, are composed of easily transportable suitcases in the trunk of the car and it is very easy to make ftp transfers of video material recorded or live feeds. Speaking of costs there are variants that are close to 1000/1500 Euros up to seven thousand in the case of the more sophisticated and are also available self pointing small antennas that are very useful for installation on vehicles of small size. This allows you to create investment both in content and by means of transmission equipment to manufacture very agile and flexible ob-van that may enter urban centers.
A very good example is the Smart electric IcarusNet van, a mobile vehicle very tiny in size but perfectly equipped for live and recorded footage that allows to create content at low cost, making it ideal for news and sports.
Farina points out: "News Spotter by Eutelsat is oriented not to the typical market of the broadcaster that airs the football match of Italian Serie A but all the events related, training, pre and post game and whatnot, but above all it is dedicated to their "minor" sports because by its very nature allows you to create an excerpt program or an entire broadcast, for example on the web, both for commercial tv, local and regional authorities. In this sense, it becomes the best solution to a sports information more widely diffused."
In fact regional tv stations must characterize and distinguish their programs from the deals of national TV and major broadcasters to survive; therefore, the main idea is to focus on events and local sports.
An example to all of what has been said is that thanks to IcarusNet Benevento Calcio could benefit from this service at very low rate.
The ideal customer is therefore the web tv, but also the sports club, that can capture events and create stories and then send them over a network and closely follow a local area.
Renato Farina concludes: "By lowering the cost of the satellite operator anyone may follow many more events on the spot and this is particularly feasible for DTT numerous channels that require fresh content. This new offering answers the need to cover many local events. The pointing of News Spotter can be made in a maximum of five minutes and it is easy even manually, given a bipper is there to simplify the whole operation. Once on, the system provides internet connectivity, and through simple on screen graphics, anyone can make an online reservation and request the bandwidth and the time slot needed. It starts with very minimal cost and you can get all the needed requirements according to the quality that the broadcaster or sports club wants to convey and then at proportionate cost. In the event that does not require a live broadcast, having the availability of connectivity, one can simply make an ftp transfer, since the speed provided by News Spotter is 6 MB in upload, not guaranteed bandwidth."
