ORS trials live 5G broadcast transmission at Donauinselfest in Vienna

ORS trials live 5G broadcast transmission at the Donauinselfest in Vienna

Vienna’s Donauinselfest, the largest open-air festival in Europe, is taking place for the 40th time this year. As part of the RTR-funded 5G Broadcast trial in Vienna, ORS is testing 5G Broadcast distribution for large live-events regarding latency and hybrid distribution live on-site for the first time.

Live streaming for a large audience without loss of quality

Every year, between 2.5 and 3 million people are flocking to the Danube Island to experience their favourite artists live. From June 23rd to 25th, visitors can expect an extensive program with more than 700 hours of live music and entertainment along the more than four and a half kilometers long area of Vienna’s Danube Island.

As part of the RTR-funded 5G Broadcast trial in Vienna, ORS will test 5G Broadcast distribution for large live-events in terms of latency and hybrid distribution. For this purpose, the existing 5G Broadcast coverage in Vienna will be extended to ensure reliable signal coverage on the Danube Island during the festival.

ORS cooperates with ORF and Kronehit for 5G broadcast live test

ORS is conducting a live test at the festival through a collaboration with ORF and a longtime participant in the 5G Broadcast Trial, private radio station Kronehit. With the help of our partners, it is possible to transmit the live signal with low latency from the festival stage via the 5G Broadcast Core to the ORF headquarter at the Küniglberg and then send it back to the festival grounds with minimal delay, where it can be received by 5GBC enabled smartphones, both via broadband via CDN (Content Delivery Network) and via the 5G Broadcast transmitter on the DC Tower, Austria’s highest office tower.

High-quality video signal for an unlimited number of visitors

“As a private radio station, we are of course interested in new distribution technologies and have been part of the 5GBC trial project in Vienna for several years. The hybrid distribution of 5G Broadcast and Broadband is an important step forward to provide Kronehit content to our listeners on their mobile phones with the highest quality even in the dense crowds of a festival,” says Martin Holovlasky, CTO of Kronehit Austria.

Preparations for the tests were carried out by ORS together with Bitstem in collaboration with Insys VT. To perform low-latency tests for high-definition video streams the Nakolos middleware on the prototype smartphones was combined with a dedicated low-latency encoding solution from Ateme.