Bonded Cellular Technology Boosts CBS ENG

As New York City was digging out of yet another winter blast in late January, WCBS reporter Lou Young reported live on the snow removal efforts in Stamford, Conn., while driving through the streets of the town — he and a shooter in the front seat and Stamford Public Safety Director (and former New York Mets Manager Bobby Valentine) in the back.

“It was a terrific story and no one else had it,” says David Friend, WCBS news director and SVP of news for all the CBS O&Os. “That’s the crux of Mobile2. That’s the core of what we are doing: to be able to drive and transmit live and report what we are seeing as we drive along.”

Mobile2 is what CBS is calling the bonded cellular technology that allows photographers to broadcast HD images in near real time from anywhere using 3G or 4G cellular telephone technology.

The technology comes in the form of backpacks from two companies, LiveU and TVU Networks. CBS got its first units late last fall, just before the winter storms. “They have really changed the nature of how we have reported stories and the outcomes of those stories,” Friend says.

The technology came into its own the day after Christmas, when a massive nor’easter dumped 20 inches of snow on Manhattan and up to 32 inches in the surrounding area. At first, the city claimed all was under control. “However, with Mobile2, we were able to demonstrate that many streets hadn’t been plowed, hadn’t even been visited by a plow,” Friend says. “They were impossible to drive on.”

The two systems work by strapping together multiple wireless broadband cards and spreading the video and audio signals across them. LiveU’s LU60, for example, bonds up to 14 cellular (3G/4G), WiMAX and Wi-Fi modems to provide a broadcast-quality link from a 12-pound backpack. The LU60 transmits 1080i HD video resolution and supports all the cellular carriers, seeking out the best signal at a given time.

The technology is not restricted to vans. Crews can transmit live video while walking, Friend says. “When we say mobile, we mean mobile to anywhere.”

Jeff Birch, VP for engineering at the CBS O&Os, says stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami and Minneapolis are also now using bonded cellular technology.

WCBS is renting its cellular backpack systems for about $2,500 a month. One vendor includes 60 hours of cellular time, while another includes unlimited service. That makes the technology affordable for the CBS stations, says Birch. “You do the deal and you’re on the air immediately. There’s nothing to build, nothing to assemble.”

However, the technology is far from perfect, Birch says. “When we drove around during snow coverage in Brooklyn and Queens, we had pretty robust coverage from all the carriers,” he says. “But when we went north into Connecticut or way out onto Long Island where the cell coverage began to diminish, the results were a little more spotty.”

Despite the similarity of the LiveU and TVU systems, in any given time and place, one usually works better than the other. “There’s really no hard evidence as to why that is,” Birch says, speculating that it may be due to differences in the processing circuitry. “We have both at our disposal at the same time and choose the one that works best.”

In a crowded situation like, say, a sports arena, the crew would be competing with thousands of cellular phone users for bandwidth. “We can’t control who is going to get that bandwidth,” Birch says. “If we are first, we may get it. If a thousand cellphone users come in, the smarts in the cell phone system are going to try to decide who gets it. We could lose it in the middle of doing a shot. We have absolutely no control over that.”

Birch says he is talking to cellular carriers about how to insure access to their broadband networks. “There may be a way — it would cost us a premium — that we can have a certain quality of service,” he says. “I’m optimistic based on what I’ve been told so far.”

In the meantime, Birch likes to have his microwave system — whose bandwidth he has total control over — as a backup. “We can use it in a moving vehicle and get pretty reliable signals as long as we can see a receive site,” he says.

Friend credits Peter McGowan, news operations manager at WCBS, and the R&D department for discovering the technology and figuring out how to put it to work in an “effective way.”

Friend says CBS stations have become adept at using the cellular technology in a short time. “In Chicago, during a huge snow storm, when cars were lined up along Lakeshore Drive, the camera operator walked along Lakeshore Drive shooting live, showing vehicle after vehicle. No other station could duplicate that. This technology has made us truly mobile, on foot as well as in the vehicles.

“With Mobile2, we are not a block away or five blocks away, but right there on the ground as it happens,” Friend says. “That’s changed the way we work and why I call this technology a game changer.”