Wi-Fi Takes To The Slopes

Europe : The world Nordic ski championship is a big event on a big mountain in the Trentino region of Italy. TV coverage is the only way to bring all the action to the public, and now TV coverage has been extended to the mobile handsets of visitors to the championship. PacketVideo, the world leader in mobilemedia software, has provided its streaming video solution for mobile devices to power a new wireless WiFi service offered during the Val di Fiemme World Nordic Sky Championship. The service is part of a broader WI-Fi testing project owned by Telecom Italia.

The Val di Fiemme World Nordic Ski Championship is the first Telecom Italia event in which a streaming video service has been offered via wireless devices (specifically HP iPAQ pdas). Nordic skiing is very strong with the Northern Europe audience, where Wi-Fi services and public hot spots are common. Recognizing that many visiting Nordic ski fans are familiar with WiFi services, the organizing committee of the championship accepted the pilot project sponsored by Telecom Italia.

"The objective we wanted to reach with this project was to make people understand how it is possible to get high quality video and advanced information services through a combination of Wi-Fi access and a small size device." Said Sandro Pierdonati, Principal Consultant of HP, who managed the project.

The service was produced the Telecom Italia Service Center by an editorial group which selected the most significant and spectacular moments of the event. The video clips were then transmitted through a satellite channel, and distributed to WiFi-equipped PDA through PacketVideo's pvServer(tm) video streaming server. Every PDA used in the service also had PacketVideo's pvPlayer(tm) installed, for viewing the highest quality video images. The combination of HP equipment and PacketVideo software allowed users to view the most exciting moments in download mode by accessing a dedicated web portal.

"This pioneering wireless video service shows that PacketVideo technology successfully operates in a variety of mobile environments, including Wi-Fi, GPRS or UMTS. The flexibility, scalability and adaptability of PacketVideo's mobilemedia solution make it ideal for any market scenario being evaluated by telecommunication service providers." said Patrick Parodi, Regional Director, PacketVideo Europe.

Marco Gilardi - Managing Director of Juniper Extensible Solutions, the local operator collaborating on the project with HP and Telecom Italia, explains "Within this project, iPaq PDAs with 11Mbps Wi-Fi PCMCIA cards were used to access the service. Users of the system included journalists from all over the world, members of FIS International Direction, (a RAI work group in charge of producing the world wide TV signal ), members of several evaluating groups including Oberstdorf/Allgäu 2005. Other important groups, including those evaluating mobilemedia solutions for Sapporo, Bormio 2005 and Torino 2006, have been able to directly check the efficiency of the system."

"The project has been a complete success," concluded Gilardi "At the end of the Championship, the mayor of Cavalese, who had been part of the Organization Committee, decided to keep the WiFi infrastructure at the Congress Palace, utilizing the technology after the event."