Reduced Costs – Increased Flexibility and Quality: UMTS/3GP Reporting

Munich / Amsterdam, 7th of September 2005:

Mobile data communications are evolving quickly because of Internet, Intranet, Laptops, PDAs and the increasing need of business applications. 3G UMTS will be the commercial convergence of conventional telephony with mobile and information technology. The UMTS transport network is designed to deliver high speed, specific content to users at mobile and temporary locations. For professional broadcast reporting MAYAH combined the strength of UMTS with powerful encoding to achieve very low bit rates.

CENTAURI® Audio Codecs offer a wide range of audio formats via IP; e.g UMTS, a mobile paket service with up- and download and interconnectivity with VPN networks for increased security. Realtime audio streaming / reporting over the UMTS network requires algorithms capable of achieving the lowest possible bit rates in order to assure a continuous broadcast.

CENTAURI® offers the newest version of AAC+SBR (MPEG 4 AAC HE) with bit rates as low as 24, 32 or 48 kBit/s. The extensive UMTS coverage already available in most industrialised nations means that high quality, mobile reporting is available in large parts of the world today.

WDR premieres UMTS (3G) realtime audio transmission

In preparation for the Pope´s visit to Cologne for the World Youth Day some special requirements needed to be met for the audio transmission. A live audio link was required from a ship on the Rhine to the WDR studios in the centre of Cologne from where they would be broadcast. As an alternative to satellite transmission, UMTS was considered and successfully tested.

MAYAH CENTAURI® codecs were used for audio streaming at low bit rates via a Vodafone UMTS data card into a VPN network connected to another CENTAURI®, all bi-directional.

Economic advantages of UMTS (3G) reporting

Reporting typically needs particular equipment and network or satellite connections. Both require fixed or temporary installations and incurr rental charges. Satellite needs specialised equipment such as a dish, modulator, etc. and provisions that adequate satellite capacity is available at a certain time. Terrestrial lines, such as ISDN need pre-ordering at the responsible Telcos. UMTS (3G) has the advantage that the equipment is small, available and, due to the mass market factor, low priced. Further, UMTS (3G) is an inceasingly available service with extremely low fees for data services – even flat rates exist and make a lot of sense for realtime streaming.

About MAYAH Communications

MAYAH Communications, a technology leader in audio transmission and inventor of FlashCast®, the automatic codec recognition, which allows compatibility to nearly all standard and proprietary audio codecs in the market, is developing innovative hardware and software products for audio and audio video transmission in the broadcasting market and beyond: Contribution, Distribution, Emission and Reporting, InHouseStreaming, WebRadio, ISDN, other broadcast networking applications and Digital Handheld Recording.

MAYAH started its operations at the end of 1997 and is a privately held company with its headquarter in Hallbergmoos near Munich, an R&D department in Flensburg and a worldwide distribution network. Its personnel is dominated by R&D, marketing and sales, highly experienced people from the industry and related businesses.

With major milestones in 2000 with the first IP/ISDN audio codec CENTAURI ® and 2002 with the popular handheld recorder FLASHMAN ®, MAYAH has been introducing its first full PAL/NTSC resolution MPEG-4 SP/ASP audio video codec IO [io] 8000 in 2003. In 2005 MAYAH is introducing CENTAURI II, the multichannel audio gatewy codec with a unique combination of functionalities for broadcasters and other users.

MAYAH stands in close relationship with and is licensing technology from FhG-IIS, Coding Technologies, Thomson, IRT, Via, AudioMpeg, France Telekom, APT and others. Its customers are in radio and TV broadcasting as well as telecommunications, studios and ISPs.

For further information please contact:

www.mayah.com
MAYAH Communications GmbH
Am Soeldnermoos 17
D-85399 Hallbergmoos
Tel.: +49-811-551745
Fax: +49-811-551755

Or visit us at the IBC show in Amsterdam at booth 1.541

For more information please e-mail to: info@mayah.com