PRESS RELEASE: For the first time in five years, the evening sky above Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour was alight with color to celebrate China’s National Day on October 1. And for the first time ever, the lively display was live broadcast to the world using drones and mmWave networks.
The event, titled “A Gathering for Celebration Over the Pearl River”, included 800 meters of fireworks, blooming 250 meters into the air. The broadcast was achieved using a commercial mmWave SA network, jointly built by HKT and Huawei, to ensure a deterministic experience for viewers with zero lag.
The large 400 MHz bandwidth and low latency of the mmWave network helped NowTV and ViuTV achieve multi-channel HD live broadcasts for tens of thousands of simultaneous online viewers. Such large events tend to need fast deployment and flexible setup, which was achieved thanks to the simplified SA architecture. During event, the network ended up achieving a stable end-to-end network latency of 5 ms.
The toB application scenarios, like this 3D HD video experience, are becoming increasingly diverse and complex, which in turn raises higher and higher requirements on our networks. mmWave networks are already seeing scaled commercial use in many scenarios in Hong Kong, with their bandwidth and low latency unlocking huge potential for experience upgrade and industry digitalization.