Tech Focus: Intercoms, Part 1 - Key to Onsite, REMI, Hybrid Operations Intercoms keep increasingly disparate production locations together By Dan Daley, Audio Editor Wednesday, April 23, 2025 - 7:00 am
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Five years on from the COVID pandemic, much of sports seems back to normal, with fans in the stands and their noise as authentic as ever over the air, even if much of the production is still REMI-produced.
Other audio has changed. though. The pandemic had suddenly extended intercom connectivity beyond the confines of venue and plant and into spare bedrooms as tech crews stayed home and isolated (or worse, quarantined).
Today, most of those remote-production protocols remain in place, albeit for economic instead of healthcare reasons. At the same time, wireless comms-type access to athletes on the field of play is reaching new levels of demand. For all those reasons, communications have further expanded, and manufacturers and users have adapted to and accommodated the new reality.
That time frame also gave new digital and IP technologies, along with interoperability standards such as AES67 and ST 2110-30, an opportunity to mature and to find application within the comms infrastructure. Similarly, artificial intelligence is waiting in the wings for its star turn on this stage.
Riedel's Rick Seegull: The transition to IP and cloud-based production tools allows production teams to collaborate remotely.
Over the past year, observes Rick Seegull, SVP, technology and business development, Riedel, intercom systems in sports broadcasting have advanced, driven by the shift toward digital and IP-based solutions, offering improved scalability, reliability, and integration capabilities crucial for communication across broadcast environments. Wireless intercom solutions, such as Bolero, have become standard, offering greater mobility and reduced cabling, which is valuable in fast-paced, dynamic sports-broadcast settings. The transition to IP and cloud-based production tools also allows production teams to collaborate remotely, enabling flexible and efficient workflows from anywhere.
In addition, he continues, there has been a focus on enhancing the user experience by offering customizable, intuitive intercom interfaces while enabling remote contribution. Security and reliability have risen to the top of priorities, with intercom systems incorporating advanced encryption protocols and fail-safes to ensure uninterrupted communication, even in the face of network disruptions.
He notes that artificial intelligence has also begun to play a key role, with AI-driven features, such as speech recognition and real-time translation, improving communication.
More Demand on the Same Spectrum The challenge with intercoms for broadcast sports can boil down to a simple equation, says Gary Rosen, VP, global sales, Pliant Technologies: the number of wireless devices keeps growing while the available RF spectrum does not. This means, he says, that teams, leagues, and productions need to squeeze more devices into an increasingly crowded RF space. That, he emphasizes, requires cooperation.
All of these applications also need to be designed, set up, and deployed by fewer and fewer staff with more and more technology to be responsible for, he explains. RF coordination can be difficult if not impossible at times. All parties have a stake in making the event go smoothly, so competitors need to play well with each other. The gear needs to be reliable, versatile, and reasonably easy to set up and use. At the end of the day, to achieve a successful show, everyone involved needs to make sure they allocate enough time to properly plan their setup, working with the other suppliers and venue personnel to make sure everyone knows what to expect and where they will need to compromise. Not easy, but it does work.
Into the Cloud
RTS Intercom Aleksandra Zdebski: The ability to blend IP, wireless, and cloud-based intercom solutions into a unified system is now a major focus for broadcasters.
RTS Intercom Director, Product Management, Aleksandra Zdebski, points out that, with sports-production teams working both onsite and remotely, intercom systems must now be able to seamlessly bridge traditional hardware with cloud-based and wireless solutions. She contends that cloud-based solutions can act as that link.
Cloud-based connectivity is helping production teams manage intercom communication across multiple locations, whether in the stadium, a remote-production truck, or an offsite control room, she says, noting RTS's recently introduced Voice Over Cloud (RVOC) series. The ability to blend IP, wireless, and cloud-based intercom solutions into a unified system is now a major focus for broadcasters.
IP-based solutions have become a standard, helping lower costs by enabling use of smartphones and other mobile devices as intercom endpoints. However, that brings its own challenges, such as increasing the risk of interference, security vulnerabilities, and bandwidth limitations due in part to those devices also running dozens of other applications.
While IP intercoms offer significant advantages, says Zdebski, successful deployment requires careful network management, security considerations, and ensuring that latency remains minimal, especially in fast-paced sports environments.
Sounds Good Besides improving efficiency for sports, digital and IP-enabled comms also have enhanced sound quality. That's critical as speech intelligibility is an increasingly important metric in that area.
Broadcast-sports users are now seeking intercom systems that provide low-latency, high-quality communication between field officials and replay centers, with minimal delay and clear audio, says Seegull, noting Riedel's Synton AES67 mode, which offers very low
