5G Puts Bonded-Cellular Solutions on the Table for Comms CP Communications deploys bonded-cellular wide-area comms for sports production By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, June 3, 2021 - 10:26 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The migration toward IP-based audio-signal transport continues, but a parallel pathway has also evolved: cellular bonding, which allows two or more cellular modems to be combined in a way that enables the end user to utilize the combined bandwidth. Cellular bonding transmits live streams via multiplexed cellular signals when Ethernet or Wi-Fi isn't available. Instead of expensive satellite transmissions, multiple cellular modems are used to combine 3G, 4G, LTE, and other cellular signals to boost connectivity.
CP Communications has staked much of its future on bonded cellular: in the case of audio, deploying wide-area comms over cellular using Unity Intercom on ruggedized, application-specific Sonim phones, replacing traditional localized intercom headends.
CP has deployed this configuration for comms on several broadcast sports productions, but the showcase and proof-of-concept instance has been the New York City Marathon, where the CP comms system faces its biggest challenges, in terms of both sheer area coverage and availability of cellular access points.
CP Communications' Brian Ready: Over the course of the last four or five years, we've migrated fully to a bonded-cellular audio and video environment.
In-house, explains Brian Ready, account executive/systems engineer, CP Communications, we've pushed the majority of our audio to Dante, and, depending upon the client's needs we'll use Unity Intercom or Clear-Com Agent IC for comms, which fit easily into a bonded-cellular ecosystem. Over the course of the last four or five years, we've migrated fully to a bonded-cellular audio and video environment.
That has been beneficial for the company and for its clients, he adds, particularly in the more intensive at-home environment that broadcast sports production has been forced to occupy due to the pandemic. The first manifestation was in video (with embedded audio), in the form of CamStream, a remote-controllable 360/PTZ camera and integrated monitor that allowed it to be operated from one location even as it was switched from another.
Running a Cellular Marathon The NYC Marathon is the showcase for CP Communications' application of bonded-cellular technology to audio.
We would traditionally spend days getting on rooftops, setting up transmit locations, receive locations, throughout New York City, because there was no one good area to set up a single receive location, says Ready. [Race organizers have] also changed the course over the last few years. But integrating Unity comms over cellular was actually pretty simple. Anybody that has operated a smartphone can easily learn how to operate this app. It's push-to-talk. The biggest challenge is who's going to be hosting the main server. Unity has a couple of different options, and it requires a public-facing IP address.
CP Communications RF Technical Director/Manager Frank Rafka adds that, over the past five years of doing RF and comms for the marathon, the company's shift to both IP and cellular has become almost complete. It has also added the Android-OS Sonim phone, whose larger-capacity, military-spec batteries suit it to a lengthy production like the 26-mile marathon. It's not unusual, however, for entire bonded-cellular productions to rely on technicians' and talent's own mobile devices, and usually a single mobile carrier's network, with a CP-provided SIM card swapped in.
CP Communications' Frank Rafka: [Comms is] going to be a hybrid environment but probably one that's trending or tending towards completely bonded-cellular/cloud-based.
We rolled over that entire show to an IP-based, cellular-based show, he explains. We were using very little if any conventional microwave for the broadcast. We used New York as an example because it's [our] largest deployment of devices of bonded cellular for video and bonded cellular for comms. On that particular show, we have over 80 spotters that are stationed throughout the course or on guide bicycles.
Rafka and Ready agree that the shift to cellular was faster and, in many ways, easier and simpler than the migration to IP. In some ways, they say, the IP shift may even have paved the way for the move to cellular. At the same time, though, they concur that client trust was harder to achieve, largely because cellular is so ubiquitous amongst consumers and doesn't have the reassuring heft of a purely professional format.
One of the struggles was the trust factor, notes Ready. In the traditional realm, we have control over everything. What is our transmit output power? Where do we put antennas? Those are fully in our control. But, when it comes to the communications, you're completely at the mercy of the cell carriers: you know, Verizon and AT&T.
On the other hand, adds Rafka, there is the benefit of piggybacking on those carriers' massive R&D reserves, especially when it comes to 5G. Everyone is looking for more and more data. How [the carriers] solve that works for us as well.
He cites another quasi-consumer solution, mesh networks, that CP deploys in cellular-challenged areas of a remote production. At the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the start of the NYC Marathon and a broadband desert for much of its 13,700-ft. span, the company resorts to a Wi-Fi solution.
CP Communications has also deployed cellular-based comms systems at Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta and at Hoka One-sponsored 50-K ultramarathons in Northern California and Arizona. Other large-scale deployments have been for CrossFit events and Fox Sports golf.
Some of those were hybrid
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
5G Puts Bonded-Cellular Solutions on the Table for Comms CP Communications deploys bonded-cellular wide-area comms for sports production By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
