Telstra expands global media network to Americas and Europe

NAB 2019: Telco Telstra has announced new partnerships in Latin America, the US and Europe to enable the delivery of sport and entertainment content globally.

Telstra Broadcast Services has expanded its Global Media Network (GMN), adding new partners in the US, Latin America and Europe.

The expanded network means Telstra now has 13 partners. The new additions are Gold Data, its first Latin American partner and one of the region’s leading telecommunications providers; Zayo Group, a major provider of American and global communications infrastructure; and Norkring, a division of Telenor that provides broadcast and connectivity services across the Nordic region.

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The partnerships were announced this week during an NAB focus on live sport and entertainment content for the delivery of live, linear and file-based media content.

Telstra Broadcast Services acting head Andreas Eriksson told press the new partnerships would tap into new markets for Telstra’s customers, providing further reach and scale for content movement into and out of the Americas region, along with innovative broadcast workflows enabled by high bandwidth and low latency networks.

He said: “This expansion is part of our strategy to grow our capability in the Americas, and continue to add key markets in Europe.

“Our new partners will make the GMN alliance even stronger and enable our customers to expand into new markets as well as bring international content back to home audiences.”

Regional growth
Telstra’s partnership with Gold Data will enable the telco to tap into its fibre optic network that reaches Mexico, The Caribbean, Central and South America to promote live events and unite more countries through live sporting games.

Its partnership with Zayo will see it benefit from its high performance fibre network in North America and Europe.

Zayo senior vice president Tyler Coates said: “We look forward to working together to offer unparalleled bandwidth, access and broadcast capabilities to high impact companies within sports and entertainment.”

Telstra also confirmed its agreement with Norkring will enable further innovation for sports and media customers in the region, particularly with Scandinavian companies leading the developments in remote production and broadcast and IP workflows.

Norkring chief marketing officer Ingvild Larner said: “This agreement gives Norkring new dimensions in the sports and media industry and gives us the opportunity to expand our services to existing and new customers.”

The new partners join a growing Telstra GMN partner alliance that includes The Switch, AT+T, TDF Group, NEP Connect, MTI Teleport Munchen, GlobalConnect, Nexion, Softbank, PCCW and China Unicom, which cover the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific regions.

The GMN utilises Telstra’s global infrastructure including fibre cable networks, data centres and cloud platforms, combined with the networks, media assets and broadcast operations of its partners to power the delivery of standard definition (SD), high definition (HD), and ultra-high definition (UHD) services across the globe.

Eriksson explains its GMN service embeds native connection with satellites and teleports to nearly 2,500 end points in major, regional and hard-to-reach locations, which includes over 1000 media and sports customers and 1,500 top sports and entertainment venues globally.

He added: “We continue to expand the Telstra GMN by partnering with innovative, forward thinking organisations that can open up new possibilities for our customers.”

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