SUCCESS STORY
The International Football Tournament in Qatar 2022 was undoubtedly one of the largest and most successful sporting events ever held. Millions of viewers from all corners of the world watched their favourite teams play live in the highest quality on television and mobile devices. The International Football Tournament 2022 not only put Qatar on the map as a perfect destination, but also as a great example of a well-orchestrated digital media, data and connectivity hub.
To deliver a successful tournament, Qatar needed to host not just the football teams, their fans and officials, but the worlds media who would broadcast what was predicted to be the most watched sporting event in the world.
The complexity of the event necessitated a highly demanding and distributed network of stadiums, post-production facilities, distribution centres, and viewer’s screens. This in turn underscored the need for a highly secure and optimised global network with low latency, monitoring, and management. The cooperation between the event organiser, global connectivity provider Epsilon Telecommunications, its parent company KT Corp and their global partners GBI, Newtelco and Syniverse, ensured that the digital delivery of the International Football Tournament was a great success.
Uninterrupted and Unparalleled Global Digital Sports Delivery from Qatar
Epsilon, KT Corp and their partners GBI, Newtelco and Syniverse delivered a range of services, including high-capacity Wavelengths, Dedicated Internet Access, IP-Transit, and Cross-Connect services in key data center locations across countries.
THEIR STORY
Put Qatar’s Global Connectivity and Data Centre Hub to The Test
The International Football Tournament posed a considerable challenge to Qatar’s data centre and connectivity infrastructure. The forecasted global audience increase was expected to grow from 3.87 billion back in 2018 to well over 5 billion in 2022. Additionally, the digital media consumption of the International Football Tournament was expected to increase significantly by over 67%. As many viewers would tune in via livestreams on their mobile devices, a large part of the International Football Tournament’s success in Qatar was going to depend on the capabilities of connectivity providers. In order to deliver an unparalleled digital sports experience, significant investments for further diversification of fixed and mobile broadband networks had to be made.
THEIR GOAL
Deliver The Best Digital International Football Tournament Experience to Viewers Around The World
The location of the International Football Tournament would provide an excellent opportunity to showcase to the world why Qatar is also a great place for carriers, digital media and cloud providers to connect and grow. Qatar has a very favourable location in the region, with direct access to the Middle East and incoming low latency terrestrial and submarine cable systems. A successful International Football Tournament event could lead to further economic growth and new digital companies coming to Qatar.
With so much dependency on connectivity for the tournament’s success, the event organiser could and would only consider the best and proven global telecom partners to demonstrate to the world its digital communication hub credentials and potential.
THEIR CHALLENGE
Diversify Network Routes from Qatar
Many submarine cable systems and the digital traffic they carry from Asia pass via the Egyptian and Mediterranean routes on the way to Europe. That puts a lot of stress on the single, primary connectivity route via the Egyptian Suez Canal. This challenge had to be addressed as connectivity bottlenecks, outages and increased latency had to be avoided at all costs during the International Football Tournament.
The solution would be to provide diversity by implementing redundant terrestrial routes during the event via the Middle East. In case there would be a service interruption via the “wet route” (via Egypt) the traffic could automatically be re-routed over land via the “dry route”. Users around the world would then still have the same uninterrupted digital experience.
However, there are not many global network operators who are able to deliver this type of solution fast and have a proven track record of handling such major digital sporting events. Epsilon, as a leading global software-defined network connectivity provider, was uniquely positioned to meet this challenge. They have expertise in handling complex connectivity projects and have also established strategic partnerships with other carriers in the region and around the world. This partnership ensured the delivery of the right solution quickly.
THEIR SOLUTION
Providing High-Capacity International Wavelengths, High Volume IP-Transit in Strategic Data Centres
Epsilon and its partners were able to guarantee uptime and uninterrupted high quality data streams by implementing diverse routes and redundancy in the network. Epsilon, KT Corp and their partners GBI, Newtelco and Syniverse delivered a combination of international high-capacity wavelengths, Dedicated Internet Access, IP-Transit and cross connect services in strategic data centre locations across countries, totalling almost 500Gbps of capacity.
Epsilon managed the high internet data volumes via its global backbone networks flawlessly. Its rich experience in delivering live streaming events via its robust Networks-as-a-Service (NaaS) paid off by providing secure monitoring and enhanced connectivity without any downtime.
Epsilon’s strong backbone with over 300 network nodes across 6 continents and understanding of the complex requirements of global content distribution over IP meant that the 2022 International Football Tournament was the best streaming media experience ever seen and recorded by a global connectivity provider. It also demonstrated the importance of having the right peering and transit providers cooperating and teaming up at the right place and time.
Together, Epsilon and its partners delivered what the International Football Tournament is all about: team spirit, unity and winning together.
”Our partnerships go beyond a typical transactional relationship. We are an extraordinarily meticulous organisation with equally fine-tuned operational structures and processes designed to deliver on the most complex requirements. This, together with our solid and experienced network, means we can provide businesses with the necessary foundations they need to achieve their objectives.
Mark DaleyDirector Digital Strategy & Business Development
Global Agility
Extensive global reach and quick provisioning
Seamless Delivery
Guaranteed end-to-end quality of service and experience globally
Unified SLA
A single, standardised high performance SLA for all partners
Fast Networks
Low-latency networks and high IP-Transit volumes
Reliable Redundancy
Built in network diversity with automatic failover
The Future
Epsilon and its global partners have once again demonstrated their ability to manage complex and data intensive live sporting events. The robust infrastructure and state of the art data centres make Qatar an ideal location for any carrier, cloud provider or digital media company to expand to. Contact Epsilon to discuss how we can deliver a successful outcome for your next digital media event, cloud or network expansion to the Middle East.
Read similar success stories and resources
DWS utilises Epsilon’s global network to deploy a mix of network and voice services to serve their customers and partners in multiple markets.
