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Beijing Goes Broadband

Perhaps more than any other Olympics, the Beijing Games are a broadband extravaganza, with scads of multimedia applications supporting different aspects of the events in China. This Olympics is using HDTV for live broadcasting for the first time in Olympics history, according to China Netcom, the official fixed-telecom service partner. And the Games are featuring high-bandwidth technology such as telepresence.

Supporting all the broadband communications is a network constructed and operated by China Netcom. The communications infrastructure for the Games covers 31 Olympic venues in Beijing, including the National Indoor Stadium, National Stadium, and the National Aquatic Center.

According to statistics from China Netcom, the company is operating about 200 optical cables per kilometer, 22 communications exchanges, 1,800 equipment rooms, and 20,000 phone switches. These and other components provide all the Olympic venues in Beijing with full optical network coverage, according to the company.

China Netcom has built a communications network with more than 10,000 kilometers of long-distance optical cables to link Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, and Hong Kong, each of which are hosting events.

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has registered thousands of people to handle some aspect of Olympic communications, including network management, technical maintenance, marketing, and customer service. These people were selected from among the 300,000 employees of China Netcom.

In January, China Netcom opened a Telecommunications Control System in Beijing that is enabling the real-time monitoring of venue networks during the Games.

Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson in March announced an agreement with Beijing Netcom, a branch of China Netcom, to provide the company with a Command Supporting System based on Ericsson's IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) offering for the Olympic Games.

Under terms of the agreement, Ericsson is the sole supplier and systems integrator for an IMS platform that enables personal multimedia communications. The Ericsson IMS allows the convergence of data, speech, and network technology over an IP-based infrastructure, and supports the management of value-added services including voice, text, pictures, and video.

The Ericsson system is providing coverage in six cities in China that are hosting Olympic events, according to Ericsson. The deal for the IMS platform at the Olympics is an extension of a contract signed between Ericsson and Beijing Netcom in April 2007 to build the first commercial IMS network in China.

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