TV Network Brings Digital Video Content to Viewers Across the Amazon

About

Rede Amazonica is the largest TV network in the Northern Region of Brazil. With 13 local TV stations affiliated to parent company Rede Globo—one of the top 20 worldwide media groups—they bring entertainment programming to more than 1.5 million households.

Customer Challenge

When Brazilian regulators released new mandates requiring that TV broadcasters make the switch from analog to digital, Rede Amazonica had to undergo costly infrastructure upgrades in order to comply. Taking on such a resource-intensive project limited Rede’s ability to develop and produce new, high-quality video content for customers, putting viewership—and revenue—at risk.

Producing and transmitting digital content to all of Rede’s local channels dispersed across 13 different cities resulted in rapidly increasing operational costs. And new pay-TV and OTT media providers entering the regional market added pressure to cut costs in order to remain competitive.

Rede needed a cost-effective connectivity solution that would enable them to link remote regional TV stations to one central location and distribute digital video content to viewers across the Amazon region.

How We Helped

To enable quick and affordable HD and 4K channel launches, Intelsat delivered managed video distribution services through a future-proof DVB-S2 MCPC platform. Using three uplinks and premier C-band distribution from one city, Intelsat helped Rede consolidate 13 HDTV feeds distributed over multiple satellites to 200+ DTTs. With the Intelsat 14 satellite, they made crystal-clear digital sports, entertainment, news programming accessible to millions across North Brazil.

Results

• Reduced over 30% of operational cost and accelerated analog-to-digital conversion – started one year before than originally planned
• Simplified video content production and distribution by consolidating distribution of 13 HD channels to a single location
• Significant cost reduction via optimized video distribution over MCPC platform
• Freed up resources to invest in more high-quality content to compete in contested market