By Ken Kerschbaumer

Swisscom has selected the Media Links MD6000 high performance video transport system in order to satisfy the video requirements of its contract with UEFA for the 2008 European Football Championships to be held in Switzerland and Austria in June. The deal has been overseen by Media Links’ regional partner VIDI.

Swisscom will be responsible for the contribution network in Switzerland and will support the delivery of video and audio signals during the tournament. Swisscom’s Broadcast Division will deploy the Media Links equipment at each of the stadiums in order to guarantee uninterrupted transmission of pristine HD video images from the stadiums in Switzerland to UEFA's International Broadcast Centre in Vienna.

Media Links will supply the MD6000 to transmit uncompressed HD signals over a 10Gbit/s protected STM-64 network reliably with extremely low latency. The MD6000 will also handle all the standard definition signals.

The core technology within the MD6000 is its patented Hitless Protection Switching. The company says it ensures delivery of pure, uninterrupted video signals even if the underlying SONET/SDH or IP network suffers a momentary outage or a 50msec protection switch. By using redundant paths, and performing a packet-by-packet comparison of the incoming signals, the MD6000 can prevent minor or major network faults from impacting valuable video signals.

“Media Links is supplying mission-critical equipment to what is an extremely high profile event in the sporting calendar. Our technology provides the most reliable delivery of these signals and we are excited that once again this has been recognized. We handled the contribution network for FIFA World Cup 2006 - using similar infrastructure – without a single video error throughout the entire duration of the month-long event,” says Mario Frattaroli, President, Media Links Inc.