West Carolina Tel Launches SRT to Live Stream Graduation Ceremonies, Powered by WISI
West Carolina Tel, a trusted telecommunications provider, has partnered with WISI, a global leader in carrier-grade video delivery solutions, to launch a next-generation video solution to address the needs of its Covid-19 affected customers in a non-traditional, but much-needed way.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- West Carolina Tel, a trusted telecommunications provider, has partnered with WISI, a global leader in carrier-grade video delivery solutions, to launch a next-generation video solution to address the needs of its Covid-19 affected customers in a non-traditional, but much-needed way.
This spring, the virus adversely impacted high school seniors and their expected graduation ceremonies, and West Carolina Tel recognized a chance to help ensure the health and safety of the communities it serves in northwestern South Carolina. It streamed local high school graduation ceremonies in real-time, allowing friends and families of high school seniors to enjoy the events from their homes, without potential exposure to the virus.
Engineers from both West Carolina Tel and WISI worked together to launch the streaming service very quickly, with WISI providing critical software at no charge.
The solution makes use of WISI's HLS streaming capability, as well as a new open-source video transport protocol, known as Secure Reliable Transport (SRT). SRT allows broadcast-quality video to be transported from remote locations over unmanaged internet connections.
"The WISI solution was so efficient and so reliable, there was no need to look any further," said Jeff Robinson, Director of Engineering for West Carolina Tel.
A special website for the ceremonies was established by West Carolina Tel, and subscribers could log on during the ceremony from their homes, eliminating the health risk of attending in person. Videographers at the graduation ceremonies streamed HD IP video with SRT encoding to West Carolina's headend. WISI's Inca IP Video Platform then decoded the SRT streams, and WISI provided the necessary Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) transcoding and HLS streaming software for the new website, at no charge.
"Our guys were pretty impressed because working with WISI, we had the whole thing up and running in about two hours," said Robinson. "WISI's engineer in Canada could actually see what we were broadcasting, to make sure everything was OK."
West Carolina Tel also utilizes WISI's award-winning VidiOS ™ management and monitoring tools. Features include inbound and outbound video thumbnails, stream sample downloads, extensive statistical analysis, and end-to-end process logging. "Our techs really like it. They find it much more user-friendly than what we previously had," said Robinson.
All of WISI's video platforms now support SRT, and this new technology promises to make video transport much more economical and reliable for its customers.
"West Carolina Tel has always been a great customer of ours, and we are proud to help provide a service that their local communities really needed and appreciated," said Mike Skowronski, VP of Sales for WISI America.
To learn more about the Inca IP Video Platform, SRT, and VidiOS™, please visit http://www.wisi.tv.
About WISI
Founded in 1926, WISI has consistently innovated video reception and distribution technology for nearly 100 years. With customers in more than 150 countries, WISI helps video distributors minimize operating costs while maximizing the scale and efficiency at every point in their network. For more information on WISI's Inca, Tangram and Chameleon product families, visit http://www.wisi.tv.
West Carolina Tel
West Carolina Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. was formed in 1952. Since its beginning, West Carolina Tel has not only met its primary goal of providing basic telephone service to the rural areas of Abbeville and McCormick counties, and the Starr and Iva areas of Anderson County, but has been able to provide the enhanced services others have come to expect in metropolitan areas of the United States. Its central offices have been fully digital since October of 1993 and by the end of 2001, nearly 500 miles of fiber optic cable had been deployed.
SOURCE WISI
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