Sohonet: A new script for the film industry LEVEL 3 APPLICATIONS SHOWCASE

Sohonet: A new script for the film industry LEVEL 3 APPLICATIONS SHOWCASE

CASE STUDY The World (Wide Web) is not enough The film world is as eager to benefit from IP transfer as any industry. For speed and convenience, nothing matches the Internet. But in the film industry, there s a problem. Sending a text file as an attachment is easy; sending film information, however, is a different world, as the founder members of Sohonet discovered. Chris Lyon, Director of New Technology at Soho-based postproduction company VTR, clarifies the problem. The amount of digital data in a film is absolutely vast. One film frame takes up approximately 15Mb - and there are 24 of these frames each and every second. Yet when we first approached communications companies to discuss digital transfer, they offered us ISDN - 128Kbps. Or, worse still, they suggested we compress the films, meaning that the quality would be compromised. Imagine telling that to Scorsese or Tarantino... It comes as no surprise, therefore, that London s film industry - and particularly the post-production companies of Soho turned their back on the traditional telecommunications companies, in favour of Level 3 and a technology infrastructure designed for broadband applications. Amongst its many guises, Soho is home to a highly-acclaimed post-production industry. Built on a steady diet of "The amount of digital data in a film is absolutely vast. One film frame takes up approximately 15Mbs and there are 24 of these frames each and every second. television commercials before turning increasingly to film, companies across Soho have become renowned as leaders in their field. Recent projects that have come to Soho include the special effects-intensive Lost in Space, Paulie the Parrot - where timing the parrot s beak movements with the speech was a precise task - and the latest Bond film, The World Is Not Enough. The value of Soho for Hollywood directors is that so many post-production companies, with specific areas of expertise, are in close proximity. This makes the community ideal for collaborative working, where different companies bring their individual skills to bear on the same project. But in order to work like this, vast quantities of film data have to be transferred back and forth between the companies. A visionary stance Soho was accustomed to such practices from working on individual commercials, and the routine was well-established. Whenever the film needed to move on to the next company, it was put on a tape and taken by hand to the appropriate location. It wasn t the ideal method for commercials, but everyone was familiar with it and, besides, the adverts were only a few minutes long. For feature films, however, it simply wouldn t do. Every time a company needed to change anything, the whole tape had to be re-recorded, reducing the efficiency of the project. Instead, the companies in Soho proposed a new approach: electronic transfer. Not only would this save vast amounts of time compared to putting everything on tape, but it would also make editing and viewing the results a much more instant process. As, Gareth Wredden, Sohonet s Managing Director, put it, sending film data should become as easy as sending a fax. In 1994, when this plan was first mooted, this was a truly visionary stance. The Internet was just beginning to make waves outside military and academic circles, and such belief in the potential of the medium was uncommon. In fact, it was too visionary. When the consortium of Soho-based companies approached telecommunications companies, what they were offered was "What I admire about Level 3 is their willingness to say "forget history", and to provide a service based on users needs, not theirs. not enough. They were met with such resistance that they decided initially to go it alone, and build what amounted to their own metropolitan area network, with point-to-point high capacity links between each of the consortium companies premises. The construction and management of the network fell under the aegis of a new company, funded by the consortium, known as Sohonet. Now fully operational, the benefits of the Sohonet network have proved enormous. High-speed transfer of film files has become a reality, and emails with 20Mb attachments are standard. Something as simple as re-colouring a scene would once have entailed turning the tape into data, making the simple alteration, then recording the data back on to a new tape. The entire process took hours: using the network, times are now measured in minutes. But high-speed transfer around Soho was only half the battle. For Sohonet to maximise its potential, and the companies in Soho to really impact on Hollywood, they had to be able to send these kind of data files to the States at similar speeds - which meant that they needed a trans-atlantic connection with the same enormous capacity as the local network. This time, though, rather than building their own connection, Sohonet found a partner that could meet its bandwidth needs: Level 3 Communications. Forget history Using an external supplier was clearly a considerable change of heart for Sohonet. Gareth Wredden explains what s behind this. What I admire about Level 3 is their willingness to say, forget history, and to provide a service based on users needs, not theirs. And I have to say, when I saw a telco offering this, my reaction was About time too! They actually seem to understand what we re trying to achieve. Of course, the central factor in Wredden s choice of Level 3 as Sohonet s partner was the bandwidth. Level 3 has this huge capacity just waiting to be used. So as soon as we want to connect to LA, Level 3 s bandwidth-on-demand will be available whenever we want it. And, Wredden adds, they can do that again in all the cities we might want to interconnect. The strength of the network is not the only area in which Level 3 scores highly. In terms of billing, Level 3 has come up with an innovative solution that understands the demands of the Internet economy. Based on the Crossroads product, it offers flexibility and scalability unprecedented in the communications world. The way traditional telecommunications companies were billing just didn t apply to Soho, Gareth Wredden points out. They were charging on the principle that the line is in use all of the time. In the film industry, people don t work like that. For perhaps three months, you re sending huge amounts of data three or four times a day, then the line might become pretty much redundant. To lease capacity full time at 100Mb a second might cost a seven-figure sum. Level 3 are offering us a kind of pay as you go approach. Billing will be based on the quantity of data sent. That s why we can safely say Level 3 is the most cost-effective communications provider for us. The film industry is notoriously conservative. When it has a winning formula, it likes to stick with it - as the endless raft of sequels shows. But with Level 3 and Sohonet proving the capabilities of broadband communications, the speed and efficiency of IP transfer is gaining converts by the day.

PRODUCT UPDATE Dedicated Internet Access - more bandwidth at less cost For many organisations today, bandwidth-on-demand is a must have. But network traffic, particularly Internet applications, can peak at unprecedented levels. How can you have flexible broadband access at reasonable prices? Level 3 s Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) offers payas-you-go, scalable bandwidth. This is how it works: You choose a burstable port at E1, DS3, or STM1 speed, or 100Mb or 1000Mb Ethernet access. Level 3 guarantees very low entry costs. You can, for example, take a DS3 port and yet pay only for a Committed Data Rate (CDR) of 1 or 2Mb. In effect you pay on a monthly basis for the equivalent of an E1 port, yet have DS3 (45Mb) bandwidth available whenever you need it. The higher your CDR, the lower the unit cost per Mb. Level 3 takes samples of your traffic usage on the port every 5 minutes over a month, discards the highest 10% of these usage samples, then charges for any extra usage above your CDR up to a ceiling of 90% usage (see example chart). Level 3 has an open carrier policy in our gateways, so you can use whatever local access provider you want. At no additional cost, Level 3 s Online Customer Service Centre provides secure access to Web-based performance reports which display bandwidth utilisation, so you can better plan your network and verify your usage-based billing. Internet Access from Level 3 is the perfect way to move into uncharted Internet territory, such as e-commerce. Similarly it provides a flexible way for established content providers to launch new services where the demand is unpredictable. Or, as in the case of Sohonet, it is ideal for the occasional distribution of enormous amounts of data. 45 Internet Access Port Utilisation Traffic (Mbps) 34 22 11 0 7 2 01:01/00 00:00 Sample Time 01:02/00 00:00 Percentile 90 Out Max Mbps In Max Mbps Out CDR

OPINION The demand led e-conomy To support the network demands of the next generation of applications requires both a technological infrastructure that is able to cope with the explosive growth and a range of products based on an understanding of the new economy. What Internet users increasingly want is to apply the immense communications benefits of email to all kinds of communication. Take, for example, the demand for high-quality graphics and sound MP3 has become the most requested term from search engines. And holding a meeting with partners in another country - or on another continent using videoconferencing is a regular occurrence in many multinational organisations. Just a few years ago, such forms of data interchange were inconceivable to the vast majority of us. But as user demand has snowballed, so the telecommunications industry has been forced to increase network bandwidth. Given that what was regarded a few years ago as high capacity has now become the norm, there is every reason to suppose that we are on the verge of a bandwidth-on-demand culture, at least in the business world. LAN speed record Users in medium and large organisations today want national, continental and even global network capabilities that work in the same way, and are as cost-effective, as LANs. Whatever information people are seeking to send, no matter how large the file, the expectation is the same; high-speed, high-integrity data transfer. To cope with this surge in demand, a new approach to telecommunications is needed, providing enormous bandwidth as standard. Because Level 3 s global IP network has been built specifically to enable users to take advantage of developing technologies and high bandwidth applications, the capacity it offers is perfect for broadband activities like film and video transfer. Using Dense Wave Division Multiplexing which enables no fewer than 16 individual 10Gbps channels to travel down the same link at the same time the Level 3 network can transfer vast quantities of data at the required speed. But the changing climate is not simply an issue of network speed and capacity. Equally important for end users is the price that they have to pay. Bandwidth-on-demand that breaks the bank is simply useless. Traditionally, the cost of communications has been based on the principle that users want the channel open all the time. As more bandwidth-intensive applications develop, it is increasingly apparent that this is in general not the case. What many companies want instead is to send vast quantities of data as and when they need to, such as a monthly board meeting by video, or transferring massive graphics files from one site to another, as in the case of Sohonet (see the case study section of this brochure). Wise up to web work To meet these changing working practices, Level 3 demonstrates again a greater understanding of emerging technologies. Our range of products shows how attuned the company is to these new demands. From International Private Lines for companies that need guaranteed secure bandwidth available around the clock to innovative billing solutions, Level 3 s prices and products help ensure that bandwidth on demand is viable for companies of all sizes. By creating a climate where the cost of using bandwidth-intensive applications is radically reduced, (Level 3 s guiding principle of silicon economics where, like Moore s law in the IT world, prices halve every six months, is key here) organisations across the globe can really begin to take advantage of the potential of the digital economy. With the Level 3 global IP network in place, the infrastructure is there not only to deliver major benefits, quickly and efficiently, but also in readiness for the next generation of broadband applications which will be even more demanding on bandwidth than those currently in use. With such foundations in place, the only limit to data transfer is imagination. And that s a far cry from the situation when the postproduction companies of Soho first conceived of using electronic transfer for their film data.

THIS APPLICATION SHOWCASE IS A PUBLICATION OF Level 3 Communications Limited Level 3 House, 66 Prescot Street London E1 8HG www.level3.com Tel: +44 (0) 20 7864 4444 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7864 4511 If you want to know more about the difference the Level 3 network can make to your business, contact our sales team: uksalesenquiries@level3.com