In Broadcast - January 2018 - 46

46

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 8 - Issue 1 | January 2018

InReply

Tata Communications
®
And F1 Partnership
Mehul Kapadia, Vice President - Global Marketing, discusses the latest
developments in Tata Communications' Formula One business at the
2017 FORMULA 1 SINGAPORE AIRLINES SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX...

InB: Tata Communications has
over a hundred Grand Prix under
the belt, what's involved in the
service?
Mehul Kapadia: We're today at
the very heart of the sport, working
with its entire ecosystem - from the
company that runs the sport - Formula
1® - to the team that wins the sport -
four time world champions MercedesAMG Petronas Motorsport- to the many
broadcasters who take the sport to the
fans globally.
Over the last six years our unique
partnership with Formula 1® has
evolved, as we work together to
transform the sport by collaborating
to innovate the way F1® reaches its
millions of fans worldwide. Today
this includes remote operations,
scalable quality of broadcast video
and rich seamless digital platforms
like Formula1.com. To ensure this, Tata
Communications sets up a network,
which could connect a small smart
city, at every race location in under
six days and dismantles it in just three
hours - a huge process that would
traditionally take weeks to ensure a
reliable, diverse and scalable service.
We do this at all the race locations
across 21 countries and five locations.
Our teams both at the race track and
at remote locations around the world

work as an integrated team with F1™
Communications, doing whatever
it takes to ensure a brilliant race
experience for the fans.
Since 2013, we have also been a
technology partner to the MercedesAMG Petronas Motorsport providing
seamless high-speed connectivity
between the 200+ physical sensors on
each car and the remote race support
team at the factory in UK during the
races anywhere in the world. Enabling
the remote engineering team to have
access to car data in real time enables
the trackside and remote teams to
work together as a highly efficient
integrated unit and contribute to the
teams' winning performance.
We work with many official F1®
broadcasters and licensees such as
Sky, delivering high-quality video feeds
and commentary of all Grands Prix via
our fibre network.
We are also the only Official
Broadcast provider for Formula 2™,
GP3™ and the Porsche Super cup
Racing Series™, delivering an endto-end fibre and satellite solution to
broadcasters from across the globe.
To
further
strengthen
our
contribution towards innovation in the

sport, we have also been running the
annual F1® Connectivity Innovation
Prize (F1CIP) - the first crowd-sourced
innovation platform in the F1 - in
partnership with Formula 1® and
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport.
The program gives fans a platform to
join hands with the sport in developing
the F1 experience for the future by
leveraging cutting edge technologies.
In its 2017 season, F1CIP captured
fan's ideas on how the Internet of
Things (IoT) could affect race team
performance and the quintessential
F1® fan experience. The program has
become one prominent source of new
ideas for the sport and is supported by
an exclusive panel of judges including
Ross Brawn Managing Director,
Motorsport, Formula One Group and
Lewis Hamilton, driver and four-time
FIA F1 Drivers' World Champion,
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport.
Our successful experience in F1®
has enabled us to broaden our
involvement in the world of sports
with newly forged relationships with
Moto GP™ and the European tour. We
have also been working with new age
media organisations like Motorsport.
tv helping them revolutionise the

sports media landscape through their
innovative internet television platform.
InB: F1® is a high performance
sport. Are there any specific
technologies that take centre stage
at a race?
MK: Everything we do with Formula
1® is underpinned by our world-class
global fibre network, which is the only
network of its kind that stretches all
the way around globe. We connect
each race track - across 20+ countries,
from the deserts of Bahrain to the
streets of Monaco - to the Formula
1 Technical HQ in UK through our
scalable, ultra-resilient and secure
infrastructure, enabling Formula 1®
to transmit data and video between
the two locations and produce
the broadcast for millions of fans
leveraging on track and remote teams
in real-time.
We also enable rich, consistent and
secure experience to tens of millions
of F1® fans all over the world on
Formula1.com by hosting the website
on our cloud infrastructure and
providing the security and content
delivery services. As the role of data in
the sport continues to grow,

The F1™ Communications Technical Centre houses
operations of Formula 1 Broadcast, Timing, Data
and Telemetry operations
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.Formula1.com http://www.Formula1.com https://www.tatacommunications.com/
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