ViewSat Looks to the Future with Miranda Routers

Miranda Technologies has installed of a pair of NVISION 8144 routers at ViewSat, one of the fastest-growing operators in the global broadcast and transmission services industry.

From its UK base, ViewSat’s high-quality infrastructure provides digital satellite services to broadcasters in the Middle East, North and sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Currently providing 100 channels on five transponders, ViewSat expects to double both figures by the end of 2013 with further increases expected in subsequent years.

“We are expanding at a phenomenal rate and Miranda has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to support our growth by fully understanding our requirements,” says ViewSat’s Head of Operations Nazir Uddin. “Fundamentally, our business is to keep our customers’ channels on air 24/7 with the highest possible quality. Miranda’s routers enable us to do that with reliable, best-in-class technology that is the backbone of our operation. This gives us the confidence to continue growing our business while maintaining a topflight service to existing customers.”

The new NVISION 8144 routers are part of Miranda’s NVISION 8500 enterprise-class router series, which offer advanced features such as redundant power supplies, control cards and crosspoints in a 144 x 144 matrix enclosed in a space-saving 8RU. The addition of the NVISION 8144s foster ViewSat’s plans for growth by extending the heart of its architecture, which centers on a Miranda NVISION 8576 router specifically designed for large facilities and already in place at ViewSat. ViewSat’s operational preference is to feed all sources through the main NVISION 8576, which then routes the source signals to the NVISION 8144s that are feeding the encoders, taking care of the redundancy switching. This approach enables ViewSat to transitionally expand its system to meet increasing demands while maintaining comprehensive control.

ViewSat had already relied on Miranda for signal management monitoring and control in the form of Miranda’s iControl video network management system, and a range of Kaleido multiviewers — Kaleido-X for source monitoring and Kaleido-IP for return monitoring. The new routers enhance the core of ViewSat’s Miranda-centric system.

“Miranda’s iControl immediately draws attention to possible problems via the Kaleido multiviewers,” says Uddin. “We love being able to notify a customer that we’ve intercepted and resolved a suspected fault before it’s had any impact. One of the beauties of iControl is that it is flexible and customizable, and we are working with Miranda on some highly innovative ideas that will further fine tune and extend our control system to support our future plans.”

“In only six years, Miranda technology has helped ViewSat transition from relatively small beginnings to a trusted global operator,” says Micky Edwards, Miranda’s vice president of sales in EMEA. “With Miranda, providers like ViewSat can intelligently and efficiently expand their infrastructures to meet the rapidly expanding demands brought on by channel proliferation and multiplatform content in EMEA and around the world.”