AI and cloud company MegazoneCloud said on June 11 it has published on its tech blog, Iting, the process of successfully delivering a cloud-based multi-site live broadcast linking South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

MegazoneCloud live-streamed JTBC’s 40th Golden Disc Awards ceremony, held at Taipei Dome in Taiwan in January, for 6 hours via a cloud international backbone network.

According to MegazoneCloud, the live broadcast transmitted the 2,000-km stretch from Taipei to Seoul through AWS regions and a backbone network, using dedicated lines only on very limited sections in Taiwan and Seoul.

MegazoneCloud stressed that, as far as is known, this was the first case of a major South Korean broadcaster succeeding in an international live broadcast using a cloud backbone network.

Until now, the media industry has had to build expensive international leased lines connecting the entire route from event sites overseas to South Korea for large-scale live broadcasts. As a result, it was typical to require fixed costs in the tens of millions of won and a build-out period of at least 1 month to live-stream a one-day event.

MegazoneCloud said it secured initial stability by setting up a local leased line only from the Taipei Dome site to a nearby cloud access point, and achieved major cost-saving effects by replacing the long-distance cross-border transmission section, where the biggest costs arise, with the cloud.

It also said it fully duplicated main and backup signals by using AWS Elemental MediaConnect built across different availability zones within AWS through a Multi-AZ setup. It explained that this also strengthened stability by enabling immediate switchover to a bypass route even if an unexpected failure occurs.

Yoo Hyeong-rim (유형림), vice president for Telco and Media at MegazoneCloud, said, "This project is a case that confirmed cloud transmission can replace existing international leased lines, based on pre-validated cloud technology and dedicated, on-site support." He added, "We will continue to support the cloud transition of the global media industry based on media-specialized technological capabilities and on-site execution experience."