Radio France business infrastructures evolve towards IP with BCE and Orange Business Services

Radio France has just reached a major milestone with the IP migration of all its audio and video distribution infrastructures with the expertise of Broadcasting Center Europe (BCE), for the media infrastructures over IP, and Orange Business Services, for the datacenter part, making Radio France one of the first French media companies to switch 100% to IP.??

Moving towards IP with BCE’s expertise

Following a call for tenders early 2019, Orange Business Services and BCE France were selected in August of that same year. Etienne Roulette, Project Manager at Radio France explains: "It is an important project: Connect in IP each place of the Maison de la Radio, technical rooms and studios. Since the creation of the Maison de la Radio, Radio France has known 3 generations of routing system. This infrastructure is therefore the 4th . Based on two redundant IP networks, this new infrastructure will allow us to be more flexible and scalable."

Clément Dufour, Solutions Architect Engineer, project manager for BCE France, highlights the teamwork with BCE in Luxembourg, "whose experts supported us during the call for tenders and preliminary studies and who, despite the confinement, were able to follow the project remotely and carry out the continuity of the site". Clément also oversaw the network wiring and the configurations and trained the teams internally at Radio France.

Technological collaboration?

Before, Radio France had two different transport systems for audio and video, to make them converge, the company chose audio and video transport over IP.

"Our partner Orange Business Services set up the network architecture, we helped Radio France to interconnect consoles, cameras, video servers, automatic audio broadcast systems... with IP technology. We have set up Media gateway equipment to migrate analog and digital audio and video streams to IP," explains Clément Dufour, "and have configured an infrastructure monitoring platform."

"For this project, it was important to work with manufacturers whose experience in IP technology was matching our expertise, such as the Cisco network infrastructure and the audio and video equipment from Lawo that were able to meet our IT and media needs."

"A major milestone in the Radio France project has been reached," says Clément Dufour, "Since September 2021, France Culture migrated to IP: the switch of the other studios will be done one after the other. France Musique then France Inter and France Info should be next in this calendar, leading to a global transition of all the studios and technical rooms of the Maison de la Radio towards IP".?

Etienne Roulette highlights the stakes and the impact of the pandemic: "Fortunately, we finished the test studio just before the last wave of the pandemic.?To achieve this objective, it was first necessary to go through a qualification stage of what had been developed during the study phase. This to ensure that the system complied with our specifications. A qualification platform has therefore been implemented to test the future IP equipment that we should connect. We were able to finish this qualification platform just before the first lockdown, which complicated the situation with the equipment delivery delays."?

The deployment calendar runs until 2023 to switch all the broadcast and production studios (about 50). "Even if the planning is ready, it takes time to do the tests and migrations before going on air. It's teamwork, everyone has been very invested, at Radio France, BCE and Orange Business Services," adds Clément Dufour,

Radio France: Studio by studio?

The scale of this IP migration requires a vast deployment schedule: studio by studio. "From the beginning of the project, we put together a multi-skills team of five persons in order to be able to deal with all the technical issues. This project also mobilized many technology providers with the necessary skills in broadcast, network, audio and video, system, server, infrastructure management and security.” Explains Etienne Roulette.

“On one hand it was necessary to involve the technical teams without impacting the users' working environment, on the other hand, the support teams must understand and master this new system which uses a completely new technology." As such, an extensive training plan was provided for nearly 70 employees. "Everything has to come together: we have barely finished setting up a studio that we have to plan the next one. After France Culture, France Musique is scheduled to go into production after the summer."?

"Usually, broadcasters rebuild their infrastructure when they move. The specificity of Radio France, beyond the large number of studios to migrate, is to run at full speed seven days a week, which forces us to find solutions to carry out the migrations without interrupting the operations, nor impacting the programs for the listeners," says Etienne Roulette. "We must limit the immobilization of each studio to the strict minimum, juggling between the different available studios."?

"As experts in digital transition and IP workflows, we had already acquired expertise in this field through projects such as RTL City. This change in technology at Radio France, by its scale and size, has allowed us to enrich our experience in the world of radio and to establish strong relationships with partners such as Orange Business Services," concludes Clément Dufour.

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