Radio World Buyer’s Guide articles are intended to help readers understand why their colleagues chose particular products to solve various technical situations. This month’s articles focus on products that support remote and sports broadcasting.
“People rely on us to broadcast their Brigham Young University games when they can’t be there in person. So we rely on several vendors to make sure those broadcasts are heard.”
Barry Squires, senior broadcast engineer for BYU Broadcasting, says one such vendor is MaxxKonnect Prioritized Wireless.
“We’ve been trusting their service for some time now. A lot of services will provide signal during initial before-game tests. In the real world, after 65,000+ Cougar fans show up with their smartphones, that bandwidth is chewed up real fast. Broadcasts can drop, or not connect at all.” With MaxxKonnect Wireless, a session is prioritized above that clutter.
“In the times we have secure wired internet, we may use that as primary, but we’ll set up the MaxxKonnect Wireless to be a seamless failover backup,” Squires said.
“Typically, on the road when we’re ‘given’ internet access, we’re not always sure of the reliability, especially when it’s Wi-Fi. MaxxKonnect Prioritized Wireless becomes a gamesaver. I understand you could use most popular codecs or even a cellular router/modem to connect with your equipment, such as laptops, but we put the MaxxKonnect Wireless Sim cards right in our Tieline ViA cellular modem. We just initialize the cellular connection on the ViA, which provides solid reliable internet connectivity.”
MaxxKonnect says the service is suitable for sports, field ENG, live reporting — including big events like election night or inaugurations — as well as remote control of equipment such as transmitters. Squires said he would recommend the service for anyone who has experienced reliability issues at events.
