he transatlantic fiber connection expands The Switch’s US network to The London Switch in the UK. The London Switch is a joint service agreement between The Switch and Arqiva.

The Switch network provides bi-directional feeds to meet the end-to-end transport needs of both US- and UK-based customers. They chose the Ventura equipment to transport contribution quality video on the existing intercontinental optics platform that serves as part of the telecommunications network backbone for international data and telephone services. For this London to New York connection, The Switch deployed Ventura VS811-Sx-48 mux and demux modules to map eight 270Mbps signals onto an OC-48c/STM-16 optical connection. Each of the eight VS811-Sx-48 channels can carry an SDI, SDTI, DVB-ASI or JPEG 2000 – compressed HD-SDI signal.

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Another Ventura product, the VS901-Tx-27, has been deployed on The Switch’s Los Angeles – New York network tributary. It uses JPEG 2000 to compress HD-SDI for transport over 270Mbps network connections, delivering artifact-free HD images with no blocking, tiling or motion dependence.

According to Dave Anderson, chief technology officer at The Switch, “The Network/VPG modules proved the most appropriate due to the number of HD formats they could handle, their ability to operate without a separate sync reference, their ability to control network management with a Web browser and the best financial value of all the products evaluated.” Extremely low latency, crucial in providing live crosses between events while adding intelligent continuity, also played a pivotal factor in the decision process.

Eugene Keane, CEO of VPG, says “The reach and flexibility of The Switch network is unprecedented. We are honored to work with a company pushing the state of the art in video transport.”