Britannia Row’s specialist comms department Surfhire oversaw a large Cisco network backbone, Riedel comms and Motorola radios to the globally watched live sporting event.
Since Britannia Row Productions acquired Surfhire in 2019, Comms and IT capabilities have become an integral part of the company’s services. In alignment with the wider Clair Global rental offering in North America and the Middle East - where recent projects include the Superbowl and Qatar Web Summit - the UK’s powerful equipment inventory is being deployed by trusted teams across major live and broadcast events.
Held in Glasgow over three days in early March, the 19th edition of the World Athletics Indoor Championships saw 586 athletes from 128 countries go head-to-head for 26 titles as 22,000 spectators watched. Great Britain & Northern Ireland women’s 4x400m relay team broke the indoor national record, and GB’s Josh Kerr claimed first place in the Men’s 3000m, the first Scottish athlete to win an indoor gold in 31 years.
To ensure uninterrupted coverage of these competitive high-octane performances both on-site and for global TV audiences, Britannia Row was asked to deliver a comms solution and a knowledgeable team of experts to Glasgow’s Commonwealth Arena.
Working on behalf of UK Athletics (UKA), the governing body responsible for overseeing the governance of athletics events and athletes in the UK, the crew distributed a large network backbone deployment of Cisco Nexus 10G Switches, Riedel Artist Intercoms network - 30 x assorted panels of IP based smart panels, 35 x Bolero wireless intercoms and 40 x BoleroNSA002 4wireinterfaces - plus 250 x Motorola R7 Series Radios with 6 x Motorola SLR 5700 Repeaters for a reliable, high performance two-way radio service.
Britannia Row comms specialist, Simon Hodge, says: “As part of the Clair Global Group of companies we have access to the most robust, state-of-the-art equipment and technical talent. We had a highly specialised crew on-hand for this project; three high-level Network Engineers and two Matrix Comms Engineers. Two of our IT engineers are CCNA Level Architects and managed the 10G Cisco backbone with ease.”
Britannia Row was also tasked with managing the entirety of the event’s spectrum, including DMR channels, PMSE channels and Microwave spectrum of up to 12Gghz for wireless cameras and links.
Hodge concludes: “A live sporting event of this scale has huge potential for RF interference between users. Thanks to Paul Carter who was equipped with a portable analyser following heavy planning, the gig happened without a hitch. He also managed Qualifying Revenue to OFCOM - the UK's communications regulator- for the spectrum, acting as our agent to ensure all stakeholders were happy.”
